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MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES 
IN PROSE 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

miscellaneous 
Studies in Prose 



COMPILED BY 
GRENVILLE KLEISER 



For the Exclusive Use of Grenville Kleiser's 
Mail Course Students 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 
1911 






Copyright, 1911, by 

GRENVILLE KLEISER 

Printed in the United States of America 



©CI.A303106 

n 



TO THE STUDENT 



It is generally recognized that clear and 
accurate thinking must precede clear and ac- 
curate expression. The selections presented 
here have a double value for the student. 
First, as examples of clear and forceful think- 
ing; second, as specimens of good English. 

The student of English should be a general 
reader of the recognized stylists. These ex- 
tracts should stimulate his interest in the 
larger works of such writers as Addison, Car- 
lyle, Macaulay and Newman. "Webster should 
be closely studied as a master of English style, 
with special regard to the needs of the public 
speaker. 

The chapter entitled ' ' Speech and Thought, ' ' 
from Lotze's famous work, "Microcosmus,'' 
is particularly commended to the student's 
attention, and is reprinted here by special per- 
mission of the publishers. 

GRENvnj:.E Kleiser. 



CONTENTS 



Sir Roger de Co\'erley 

By Joseph Addison (1672-1719) . 1 

DART}ktouTH College Case 

By Daniel Webster (1782-1852) . 6 

WnjJAM Pitt 

By Thomas Carlyle (1795-lSSl) . 71 

On the Athenian Orators 

By Thomas Babington Macaulay 
(1800-1859) ^^ 

Literature . ^ ^ _ 

By John Henry Newman (1801-1890) 112 

Speech and Thought 

By Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817- 
1881) ^^^ 



Miscellaneous Studies 
IN Prose 



SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY 

BY JOSEPH ADDISON 

TELE first and most obvious reflections which 
arise in a man who changes the city 
for the country are upon the different 
manners of the people whom he meets with in 
those two different scenes of life. By manners 
I do not mean morals, but behavior and good- 
breeding as they show themselves in the town 
and in the country. 

And here, in the first place, I must observe 
a very great revolution that has happened in 
this article of good-breeding. Several obliging 
deferences, condescensions, and submissions, 
with many outward forms and ceremonies 
that accompany them, were first of all brought 
up among the politer part of mankind, who 
lived in courts and cities, and distinguished 
themselves from the rustic part of the species 
(who on all occasions acted bluntly and natu- 
rally) by such a mutual complaisance and in- 
tercourse of civilities. These forms of con- 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

versation by degrees multiplied and grew 
troublesome; the modish world found too 
great a constraint in them, and have therefore 
thrown most of them aside. Conversation, 
like the Romish religion, was so encumbered 
with show and ceremony that it stood in need 
of a reformation to retrench its superfluities 
and restore it to its natural good sense and 
beauty. At present, therefore, an uncon- 
strained carriage and a certain openness of 
behavior are the height of good-breeding. The 
fashionable world is grown free and easy ; our 
manners sit more loose upon us. Nothing is 
so modish as an agreeable negligence. In a 
word, good-breeding shows itself most where 
to an ordinary eye it appears the least. 

If after this we look on the people of mode 
in the country we find in them the manners 
of the last age. They have no sooner fetched 
themselves up to the fashion of the polite 
world but the town has dropt them, and are 
nearer to the first state of nature than to those 
refinements which formerly reigned in the 
court, and still prevail in the country. One 
may now know a man that never conversed in 
the world by his excess of good-breeding. A 
polite country squire shall make you as many 
bows in half an hour as would serve a courtier 
for a week. There is infinitely more to do 
about place and precedency in a meeting of 
justices' wives than in an assembly of duch- 
esses. 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

This rural politeness is very troublesome to 
a man of my temper, who generally take the 
chair that is next me, and walk first or last, 
in the front or in the rear, as chance directs. 
I have known my friend Sir Roger's dinner 
almost cold before the company could adjust 
the ceremonial and be prevailed upon to sit 
down ; and have heartily pitied my old friend, 
when I have seen him forced to pick and cull 
his guests, as they sat at the several parts of 
his table, that he might drink their healths 
according to their respective ranks and qual- 
ities. Honest Will Wimble, who I should have 
thought had been altogether uninfected with 
ceremony, gives me abundance of trouble in 
this particular. Tho he has been fishing all 
the morning, he will not help himself at din- 
ner till I am served. When we are going out 
of the hall he runs behind me ; and last night, 
as we were walking in the fields, stopt short 
at a stile till I came up to it, and upon my 
making signs to him to get over, told me, with 
a serious smile, that sure I believed they had 
no manners in the country. 

There has happened another revolution in 
the point of good-breeding, which relates to 
the conversation among men of mode, and 
which I can not but look upon as very ex- 
traordinary. It v/as certainly one of the first 
distinctions of a well-bred man to express 
everything that had the most remote appear- 
ance of being obscene in modest terms and 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

distant phrases ; while the clown, who had no 
such delicacy of conception and expression, 
clothed his ideas in those plain, homely terms 
that are the most obvious and natural. This 
kind of good manners was perhaps carried to 
an excess, so as to make conversation too stiff, 
formal, and precise; for which reason (as 
hypocrisy in one age is generally succeeded by 
atheism in another) conversation is in a great 
measure relapsed into the first extreme; so 
that at present several of our men of the town, 
and particularly those who have been polished 
in France, make use of the most coarse, uncivil- 
ized words in our language, and utter them- 
selves often in such a manner as a clown 
would blush to hear. 

This infamous piece of good-breeding, which 
reigns among the coxcombs of the town, has 
not yet made its way into the country; and 
as it is impossible for such an irrational way 
of conversation to last long among a people 
that make any profession of religion, or show 
of modesty, if the country gentlemen get into 
it they will certainly be left in the lurch. 
Their good-breeding will come too late to 
them, and they will be thought a parcel of 
lewd clowns, while they fancy themselves talk- 
ing together like men of wit and pleasure. 

As the two points of good-breeding which I 
have hitherto insisted upon regard behavior 
and conversation, there is a third, which turns 
upon dress. In this, too, the country are very 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

much behindhand. The rural beaus are not 
yet got out of the fashion that took place at 
the time of the Revolution, but ride about the 
country in red coats and laced hats, while the 
women in many parts are still trying to outvie 
one another in the height of their head-dresses. 
But a friend of mine, who is now upon the 
western circuit, having promised to give me 
an account of the several modes and fashions 
that prevail in the different parts of the na- 
tion through which he passes, I shall defer the 
enlarging upon this last topic till I have 
received a letter from him, which I expect 
every post. 



THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE* 

BY DANIEL WEBSTER 

(Argument before the Supreme Court of the United 
States, at Washington, on the 10th of March, 1818.) 

(The action, The Trustees of Dartmouth College, 
vs. William H. Woodward, was commenced in the 
Court of Common Pleas, Grafton County, State of 
New Hampshire, February term, 1817. The declara- 
tion was trover for the books of record, original 
charter, common seal, and other corporate property 
of the college. The conversion was alleged to have 
been made on the 7th day of October, 1816. The 
proper pleas were filed, and by consent the cause 
was carried directly to the Supreme Court of New 
Hampshire, by appeal, and entered at the May term, 
1817. The general issue was pleaded by the de- 
fendant, and joined by the plaintiffs. The facts in 
the case were then agreed upon by the parties, and 
drawn up in the form of a special verdict, reciting 
the charter of the college and the acts of the legis- 
lature of the State, passed June and December, 1816, 
by which the said corporation of Dartmouth College 
was enlarged and improved, and the said charter 
amended. 

The question made in the case was, whether those 
acts of the legislature were valid and binding upon 
the corporation, without their acceptance or assent, 
and not repugnant to the Constitution of the United 
States. If so, the verdict found for the defendants; 
otherwise, it found for the plaintiffs. 

The case was continued to the September term of 
the court in Eockingham County, where it was ar- 
gued; and at the November term of the same year, 
in Grafton County, the opinion of the court was 
delivered by Chief Justice Eichardson, in favor of 

♦Published by kind permission of Little, Brown & Company. 

6 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

the validity and constitutionality of the acts of the 
legislature; and judgment was accordingly entered 
for the defendant on the special verdict. 

Thereupon a writ of error was sued out by the 
original plaintiffs, to remove the cause to the Su- 
preme Court of the United States; where it was 
entered at the term of the court held at Washington, 
on the first Monday of February, 1818. 

The cause came on for argument on the 10th 
day of March, 1818, before all the judges. It was 
argued by Mr. Webster and Mr. Hopkinson for the 
plaintiffs in error, and by Mr. Holmes and the 
Attorney-General (Writ) for the defendant in error. 

At the term of the court held in February, 1819, 
the opinion of the judges was delivered by Chief 
Justice Marshall, declaring the acts of the legisla- 
ture unconstitutional and invalid, and reversing the 
judgment of the State Court. The Court, with the 
exception of Mr. Justice Duvall, were unanimous. 

The following was the argument of Mr. Webster 
for the plaintiffs in error.) 



THE general question is, whether the acts 
of the Legislature of New Hampshire 
of the 27th of June, and of the 18th 
and 26th of December, 1816, are valid and 
binding on the plaintiffs, without their accept- 
ance or assent. 

The charter of 1769 created and established 
'a corporation, to consist of twelve persons, 
and no more; to be called the "Trustees of 
Dartmouth College." The preamble to the 
charter recites that it is granted on the appli- 
cation and request of the Rev. Eleazer Wheel- 
oek: That Doctor Wheelock, above the year 
1754, established a charity school, at his own 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

expense, and on his own estate and plantation ; 
That for several years, through the assistance 
of well-disposed persons in America, granted 
at his solicitation, he had clothed, maintained, 
and educated a number of native Indians, and 
employed them afterward as missionaries and 
schoolmasters among the savage tribes: That 
his design promising to be useful, he had con- 
stituted the Rev. Mr. Whitaker to be his at- 
torney, with power to solicit contributions in 
England, for the further extension and carry- 
ing on of his undertaking; and that he had 
requested the Earl of Dartmouth, Baron 
Smith, Mr. Thornton, and other gentlemen to 
receive such sums as might be contributed in 
England toward supporting his school, and to 
be trustees thereof, for his charity; which 
these persons had agreed to do: That there- 
upon Doctor Wheelock had executed to them 
a deed of trust, in pursuance of such agree- 
ment between him and them, and, for divers 
good reasons, had referred it to these persons 
to determine the place in which the school 
should be finally established. And, to enable 
them to form a proper decision on this subject, 
had laid before them the several offers which 
had been made to him by the several govern- 
ments in America, in order to induce him to 
settle and establish his school within the lim- 
its of such governments for their own emolu- 
ment and the increase of learning in their re- 
spective places, as well as for the furtherance 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

of his general original design : And inasmuch 
as a number of the proprietors of lands in 
New Hampshire, animated by the example of 
the Governor himself and others, and in con- 
sideration that, without any impediment to its 
original. design, the school might be enlarged 
and improved, to promote learning among the 
English, and to supply ministers to the people 
of the Province, had promised large tracts of 
land, provided the school should be established 
in that Province, the persons before men- 
tioned having weighed the reasons in favor of 
the several places proposed, had given the 
preference to this Province and these offers: 
That Doctor Wheelock therefore represented 
the necessity of a legal incorporation, and pro- 
posed that certain gentlemen in America 
whom he had already named and appointed 
in his will to be trustees of his charity after 
his decease, should compose the corporation. 
Upon this recital, and in consideration of the 
laudable original design of Doctor Wheelock, 
and willing that the best means of education 
be established in New Hampshire for the ben- 
efit of the Province, the king granted the char- 
ter, by the advice of his Provincial Council. 

The substance of the facts thus recited is, 
that Doctor Wheelock has founded a charity 
on funds owned and procured by himself; 
that he was at that time the sole dispenser and 
sole administrator, as well as the legal owner, 
of these funds; that he had made his will, 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

devising this property in trust, to continue 
the existence and uses of the school, and ap- 
pointed trustees ; that, in this state of things, 
he had been invited to fix his school perma- 
nently in New Hampshire, and to extend the 
design of it to the education of the youth of 
that Province; that before he removed his 
school, or accepted this invitation, which his 
friends in England had advised him to accept, 
he applied for a charter, to be granted, not to 
whomsoever the king or government of the 
Province should please, but to such persons as 
he named and appointed, namely, the persons 
whom he had already appointed to be the 
future trustees of his charity by his will. 

The charter, or letters patent, then proceed 
to create such a corporation, and to appoint 
twelve persons to constitute it, by the name 
of the ''Trustees of Dartmouth College"; to 
have perpetual existence as such corporation, 
and vrith power to hold and dispose of lands 
and goods, for the use of the college, with all 
the ordinary powers of corporations. They 
are in their discretion to apply the funds and 
property of the college to the support of the 
T3resident, tutors, ministers, and other officers 
of the college, and such missionaries and 
schoolmasters as they may see fit to employ 
among the Indians. There are to be twelve 
trustees forever, and no more, and they are 
to have the right of filling vacancies occurring 
in their own body. The Rev. Mr. Wheelock 

10 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

is declared to be the founder of the college, 
and is, by the charter, appointed first presi- 
dent, with power to appoint a successor by his 
last will. All proper powers of government, 
superintendence and visitation are vested in 
the trustees. They are to appoint and remove 
all officers at their discretion, to fix their sal- 
aries and assign their duties, and to make 
all ordinances, orders, and laws for the gov- 
ernment of the students. To the end that 
the persons who had acted as depositaries of 
the contributions in England, and who had 
also been contributors themselves, might be 
satisfied of the good use of their contributions, 
the president was annually, or when required, 
to transmit to them an account of the progress 
of the institution and the disbursements of 
its funds, so long as they should continue to 
act in that trust. These letters patent are to 
be good and effectual, in law, against the king, 
his heirs and successors forever, without fur- 
ther grant or confirmation; and the trustees 
are to hold all and singular these privileges, 
advantages, liberties and immunities to them 
and to their successors forever. 

No funds are given to the college by this 
charter. A corporate existence and capacity 
are given to the trustees, with the privileges 
and immunities mentioned, to enable the foun- 
der and his associates better to manage the 
funds they themselves had contributed, and 
such others as they might afterward obtain. 

11 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

After the institution thus created and con- 
stituted had existed, uninterruptedly and use- 
fully, nearly fifty years, the legislature of 
New Hampshire passed the acts in question. 

The first makes the twelve trustees under 
the charter, and nine other individuals, to be 
appointed by the Governor and Council, a 
corporation, by a new name ; and to this new 
corporation transfers all the property, rights, 
powers, liberties, and privileges of the old 
corporation; with further power to establish 
new colleges and an institute, and to apply ail 
or any part of the funds to these purposes; 
subject to the power and control of a board of 
twenty-five overseers, to be appointed by the 
Governor and Council. 

The second act makes further provisions 
for executing the objects of the first, and the 
last act authorizes the defendant, the treasurer 
of the plaintiffs, to retain and hold their prop- 
erty against their will. 

If these acts are valid, the old corporation 
is abolished and a new one created. The first 
act does, in fact, if it can have any effect, cre- 
ate a new corporation, and transfer to it all 
the property and franchises of the old. The 
two corporations are not the same in anything 
which essentially belongs to the existence of a 
corporation. They have different names, and 
different powers, rights and duties. Their or- 
ganization is wholly different. The powers of 
the corporation are not vested in the same or 

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similar hands. In one, the trustees are twelve 
and no more. In the other, they are twenty- 
one. In one the power is in a single board. 
In the other it is divided between two boards. 
Altho the act professes to include the old trus- 
tees in the new corporation, yet that was Avith- 
out their assent, and against their remon- 
strance; and no person can be compelled to 
be a member of such a corporation against his 
will. It was neither expected nor intended 
that they should be members of the new cor- 
poration. The act itself treats the old cor- 
poration as at an end, and, going on the 
ground that all its functions have ceased, it 
provides for the first meeting and organiza- 
tion of the new corporation. It expressly pro- 
vides also that the new corporation shall have 
and hold all the property of the old, a provi- 
sion which would be quite unnecessary upon 
any other ground than that the old corpora- 
tion was dissolved. But if it could be con- 
tended that the effect of these acts was not 
entirely to abolish the old corporation, yet it 
is manifest that they impair and invade the 
rights, property, and powers of the trustees 
under the charter, as a corporation, and the 
legal rights, privileges and immunities which 
belong to them as individual members of the 
corporation. 

The twelve trustees were the sole legal own- 
ers of all they acquired under the charter. By 
the acts others are admitted, against their will, 

13 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

to be joint owners. The twelve individuals 
who are trustees were possest of all the fran- 
chises and immunities conferred by the char- 
ter. By the acts nine other trustees and 
twenty-five overseers are admitted, against 
their will, to divide these franchises and im- 
munities with them. 

If, either as a corporation or as individuals, 
they have any legal rights, this forcible intru- 
sion of others violates those rights, as mani- 
festly as an entire and complete ouster and dis- 
possession. These acts alter the whole constitu- 
tion of the corporation. They affect the rights 
of the whole body as a corporation, and the 
rights of the individuals who compose it. They 
revoke corporate powers and franchises. They 
alienate and transfer the property of the col- 
lege to others. By the charter the trustees had 
a right to fill vacancies in their own number. 
This was now taken away. They were to con- 
sist of twelve, and, by express provision, of no 
more. This is altered. They and their suc- 
cessors, appointed by themselves, were forever 
to hold the property. The legislature has 
found successors for them before their seats 
are vacant. The powers and privileges which 
the twelve were to exercise exclusively are now 
to be exercised by others. By one of the acts 
they are subjected to heavy penalties if they 
exercise their offices, or any of those powers 
and privileges granted them by charter, and 
which they had exercised for fifty years. They 

14 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

are to be punished for not accepting: the new 
grant and taking its benefits. This, it must be 
confest, is rather a summary mode of settling 
a question of constitutional rights. Not only 
are new trustees forced into the corporation, 
but new trusts and uses are created. The col- 
lege is turned into a university. Power is 
given to create new colleges, and, to authorize 
any diversion of the funds which may be 
agreeable to the new boards, sufficient latitude 
is given by the undefined power of establishing 
an institute. To these new colleges and this 
institute the funds contributed by the found- 
er, Doctor Wheelock, and by the original do- 
nors, the Earl of Dartmouth and others, are 
to be applied in plain and manifest disregard 
of the uses to which they were given. 

The president, one of the old trustees, had a 
right to his office, salary, and emoluments, 
subject to the twelve trustees alone. His title 
to these is now changed and he is made ac- 
countable to new masters. So also all the pro- 
fessors and tutors. If the legislature can at 
pleasure make these alterations and changes 
in the rights and privileges of the plaintiffs, 
it may, with equal propriety, abolish these 
rights and privileges altogether. The same 
power which can do any part of this work can 
accomplish the whole. And, indeed, the argu- 
ment on which these acts have been hitherto 
defended goes altogether to the ground, that 
this is such a corporation as the legislature 

15 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

may abolish at pleasure ; and that its members 
have no rights, liberties, franchises, property, 
or privileges, which the legislature msij not 
revoke, annul, alienate or transfer to others, 
whenever it sees fit. 

It will be contended by the plaintiffs that 
these acts are not valid and binding on them 
without their assent : 

1. Because they are against common right 
and the Constitution of New Hampshire. 

2. Because they are repugnant to the Con- 
stitution of the United States. 

I am aware of the limits which bound the 
jurisdiction of the court in this case, and that 
on this record nothing can be decided but the 
single question, whether these acts are repug- 
nant to the Constitution of the United States. 
Yet it may assist in forming an opinion of 
their true nature and character to compare 
them with those fundamental principles intro- 
duced into the State governments for the pur- 
pose of limiting the exercise of the legislative 
power, and which the constitution of New 
Hampshire expresses with great fulness and 
accuracy. 

It is not much to assert that the Legislatur3 
of New Hampshire would not have been com- 
petent to pass the acts in question, and to 
make them binding on the plaintiffs without 
their assent, even if there had been, in the 
Constitution of New Hampshire or of the 
United States, no special restriction on their 

16 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

power, because these acts are not the exercise 
of a power properly legislative. Their effect 
and object are to take away from one rights, 
property and franchises, and to grant them to 
another. This is not the exercise of a legisla- 
tive powder. To justify the taking away of 
vested rights there must be a forfeiture to 
adjudge upon and declare which is the proper 
province of the judiciary. Attainder and 
confiscation are acts of sovereign power, not 
acts of legislation. The British Parliament, 
among other unlimited powers, claims that of 
altering and vacating charters, not as an act 
of ordinary legislation, but of uncontrolled 
authority. It is theoretically omnipotent. 
Yet, in modern times, it has very rarely at- 
tempted the exercise of this power. In a cele- 
brated instance those who asserted this power 
in Parliament vindicated its exercise only in a 
case in which it could be shown: First, that 
the charter in question was a charter of politi- 
cal power ; second, that there was a great and 
overruling state necessity, justifying the vio- 
lation of the charter; third, that the charter 
had been abused and justly forfeited. The bill 
affecting this charter did not pass. Its history 
is well known. The act which afterward did 
pass, passed with the assent of the corporation. 
Even in the worst times this power of Parlia- 
ment to repeal and rescind charters has not 
often been exercised. The illegal proceedings 
in the reign of Charles II were under color of 

17 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

law. Judgments of forfeiture were obtained 
in the courts. Such was the case of the quo 
warranto against the city of London, and the 
proceedings by which the charter of Massa- 
chusetts was vacated. 

The Legislature of New Hampshire has no 
power over the rights of the plaintiffs than 
existed somewhere in some department of gov- 
ernment before the Revolution. The British 
Parliament could not have annulled or re- 
voked this grant as an act of ordinary legis- 
lation. If it had done it at all it could only 
have been in virtue of that sovereign power, 
called omnipotent, which does not belong to 
any legislature in the United States. The 
Legislature of New Hampshire has the same 
power over this charter which belonged to the 
king who granted it, and no more. By the 
law of England the power to create corpora- 
tions is a part of the royal prerogative. By 
the Revolution this power may be considered 
as having devolved on the legislature of the 
State, and it has accordingly been exercised 
by the legislature. But the king can not 
abolish a corporation, or new-model it, or alter 
its powers, without its assent. This is the ac- 
knowledged and well-known doctrine of the 
common law. ^'Whatever might have been 
the notion in former times, ' ' says Lords Mans- 
field, *'it is most certain now that the corpora- 
tions of the universities are lay corporations; 
and that the crown can not take away from 

18 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

them any rights that have been formerly sub- 
sisting in them under old charters or prescrip- 
tive usage." After forfeiture duly found, 
the king may regrant the franchises; but a 
grant of franchises already granted, and of 
which no forfeiture has been found, is void. 

Corporate franchises can only be forfeited 
by trial and judgment. In case of a new char- 
ter or grant to an existing corporation it may 
accept or reject it as it pleases. It may accept 
such part of the grant as it chooses and reject 
the rest. In the very nature of things a char- 
ter can not be forced upon any body. No one 
can be compelled to accept a grant, and with- 
out acceptance the grant is necessarily void. 
It can not be pretended that the legislature, 
as successor to the kiug in this part of his pre- 
rogative, has any power to revoke, vacate, or 
alter this charter. If, therefore, the legisla- 
ture has not this power, by any specific grant 
contained in the constitution, nor as included 
in the ordinary legislative powers, nor by rea- 
son of its succession to the prerogatives of the 
crown in this particular, on what ground 
would the authority to pass these acts rest, 
even if there were no prohibitory clauses in 
the constitution and the Bill of Rights ? 

But there are prohibitions in the Constitu- 
tion and Bill of Rights of New Hampshire, 
introduced for the purpose of limiting the 
legislative power and protecting the rights 
and property of the citizens. One prohibition 

19 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

is, "that no person shall be deprived of his 
property, immunities, or privileges, put out 
of the protection of the law, or deprived of 
his life, liberty, or estate, but by judgment of 
his peers or the law of the land. ' ' 

In the opinion, however, which was given in 
the court below, it is denied that the trustees 
under the charter had any property immunity, 
liberty, or privilege in this corporation within 
the meaning of this prohibition in the Bill of 
Rights. It is said that it is a public corpora- 
tion and public property; that the trustees 
have no greater interest in it than any other 
individuals; that it is not private property 
which they can sell or transmit to their heirs, 
and that therefore they have no interest in it ; 
that their office is a public trust, like that of 
the Governor or a judge, and that they have 
no more concern in the property of the college 
than the Governor in the property of the 
State, or than the judges in the fines which 
they impose on the culprits at their bar ; that 
it is nothing to them whether their power shall 
be extended or lessened, any more than it is 
to their honors whether their jurisdiction 
shall be enlarged or diminished. It is neces- 
sary, therefore, to inquire into the true nature 
and character of the corporation which was 
created by the charter of 1769. 

There are divers sorts of corporations ; and 
it may be safely admitted that the legislature 
has more power over some than others. Some 

20 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

corporations are for government and political 
arrangement, as such, for example, as cities, 
counties, and towns in New England. These 
may be changed and modified r.s public con- 
veniences may require, due regard being al- 
w^ays had to the rights of property. Of such 
corporations, all who live within the limits 
are, of course, obliged to be members, and to 
submit to the duties which the law imposes on 
them as such. Other civil corporations are 
for the advancement of trade and business, 
such as banks, insurance companies, and the 
like. These are created, not by general law, 
but usually by grant. Their constitution is 
special. It is such as the legislature sees fit 
to give, and the grantees to accept. 

The corporation in question is not a civil, 
altho it is a lay corporation. It is an eleemos- 
ynary corporation. It is a private charity, 
originally founded and endowed by an in- 
dividual, with a charter obtained for it at his 
request, for the better administration of his 
charity. *'The eleemosynary sort of corpora- 
tions are such as are constituted for the per- 
petual distributions of the free alms or bounty 
of the founder of them to such persons as he 
has directed. Of this are all hospitals for the 
maintenance of the poor, sick and impotent; 
and all colleges, both in our universities and 
out of them." Eleemosynary corporations 
are for the management of private property, 
according to the will of the donors. They are 

21 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

private corporations. A college is as much a 
private corporation as a hospital; especially 
a college founded, as this was, by private 
bounty. A college is a charity. *'The estab- 
lishment of learning," says Lord Hardwicke, 
" is a charity, and so considered in the statute 
of Elizabeth. A devise to a college, for their 
benefit, is a laudable charity, and deserves 
encouragement. ' ' 

The legal signification of a charity is derived 
chiefly from the statute 43 Eliz., ch. 4. ''Those 
purposes," says Sir William Grant, **are con- 
sidered charitable which that statute enumer- 
ates. " Colleges are enumerated as charities 
in that statute. The government in these cases 
lends its aid to perpetuate the beneficent in- 
tention of the donor by granting a charter 
under which his private charity shall continue 
to be dispensed after his death. This is done 
either by incorporating the objects of the 
charity, as, for instance, the scholars in a col- 
lege or the poor in a hospital, or by incor- 
porating those who are to be governors or 
trustees of the charity. In cases of the first 
sort the founder is, by the common law, visi- 
tor. In early times it became a maxim, that 
he who gave the property might regulate it in 
future. ' ' Cujus est dare, ejus est disponere. ' ' 
This right of visitation descended from the 
founder to his heir as a right of property, and 
precisely as his other property went to his 
heir; and in default of heirs it went to the 

22 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

king, as all other property goes to the king 
for the want of heirs. The right of visitation 
arises from the property. It grows out of the 
endowment. The founder may, if he pleases, 
part with it at any time when he establishes 
the charity, and may vest it in others. There- 
fore, if he chooses that governors, trustees, or 
overseers should be appointed in the charter, 
he may cause it to be done, and his power of 
visitation may be transferred to them, instead 
of descending to his heirs. The persons thus 
assigned or appointed by the founder will be 
visitors, with all the powers of the founder, 
in exclusion of his heirs. The right of visita- 
tion, then, accrues to them, as a matter of 
property, by the gift, transfer, or appointment 
of the founder. This is a private right, which 
they can assert in all legal modes, and in 
which they have the same protection of the 
law as in all other rights. As visitors they 
may make rules, ordinances, and statutes, and 
alter and repeal them, as far as permitted so 
to do by the charter. Altho the charter pro- 
ceeds from the crown or the government, it is 
considered as the will of the donor. It is 
obtained at his request. He imposes it as the 
rule which is to prevail in the dispensation of 
his bounty in all future times. The king or 
government which grants the charter is not 
thereby the founder, but he who furnishes 
the funds. The gift of the revenues is the 
foundation. 

23 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

The leading case on the subject is Phillips 
V. Bury. This was an ejectment brought to 
recover the rectory-house, etc., of Exeter Col- 
lege in Oxford. The question was whether 
the plaintiff or defendant was legal rector. 
Exeter College was founded by an individual, 
and incorporated by a charter granted by 
Queen Elizabeth. The controversy turned 
upon the power of the visitor, and, in the dis- 
cussion of the cause, the nature of college 
charters and corporations was very fully con- 
sidered. Lord Holt's judgment, copied from 
his own manuscript, is found in 2 Term Re- 
ports, 346. The following is an extract : 

''That we may the better apprehend the nature 
of a visitor, we are to consider that there are in law 
two sorts of corporations aggregate; such as are for 
public government, and such as are for private charity. 
Those that are for the public government of a town, 
city, mystery, or the like, being for public advan- 
tage, are to be governed accordingly to the laws 
of the land. If they make any particular private 
laws and constitutions, the validity and justice of 
them is examinable in the king's courts. Of these 
there are no particular visitor; there are no patrons 
of these; therefore, if no provision be in the charter 
how the succession shall continue, the law supplieth 
the defect of the Constitution, and saith it shall be 
by election; as mayor, aldermen, common council, 
and the like. But private and particular corpora- 
tions for charity, founded and endowed by private 
persons, are subject to the private government; if 
there be no visitor appointed by the founder, the 
law appoints the founder and his heirs to be visitors, 
who are to act and proceed according to the par- 

24 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

ticular laws and constitutions assigned them by the 
founder. It is now admitted on all hands that the 
founder is patron, and as founder is visitor, if no 
particular visitor be assigned; so that patronage 
and visitation are necessary consequents, one upon 
another. For this visitorial power was not intro- 
duced by any canons or constitutions ecclesiastical 
(as was said by a learned gentleman whom I have 
in my eye, in his argument of this case); it is an 
appointment of law. It ariseth from the property 
which the founder had in the lands assigned to 
support the charity; and as he is the author of 
the charity, the law gives him and his heirs a visita- 
torial powder, that is, an authority to inspect the 
actions and regulate the behavior of the members 
that partake of the charity. For it is fit the mem- 
bers that are endowed and that have the charity 
bestowed upon them, should not be left to them- 
selves, but pursue the intent and design of him that 
bestowed it upon them. Now, indeed, where the poor, 
or those that receive the charity, are not incorporated, 
hut there are certain trustees who dispose of the char- 
ity, there is no visitor, because the interest of the 
revenue is not vested in the poor that have the benefit 
of the charity, but they are subject to the orders 
and directions of the trustees. But where they who 
are to enjoy the benefit of the charity are incor- 
porated, there to prevent all perverting of the 
charity, or to compose differences that may happen 
among them, there is by law a visitatorial power; 
and it being a creature of the founder's own, it 
is reason that ho and his heirs should have that 
power, unless by the founder it is vested in some 
other. Now there is no manner of difference be- 
tween a college and a hospital, except only in de- 
gree. A hospital is for those that are i)Oor, and 
mean, and low, and sickly; a college is for another 
sort of indigent persons; but it hath another intent 
to study in and breed up persons in the w^orld that 
have no otherw^ise to live; but still it is as muck 

25 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 



within the reasons as hospitals. And if in a hos- 
pital the master and poor are incorporated, it is a 
college having a common seal to act by, altho it 
hath not the name of a college (which always sup- 
poseth a corporation), because it is of an inferior 
degree; and in the one case and in the other there 
must be a visitor, either the founder and his heirs 
or one appointed by him; and both are eleemosy- 



Lord Holt concluded his whole ar^ment by 
again repeating that that college was a private 
corporation, and that the founder had a right 
to appoint a visitor, and give him such power 
as he saw fit. 

The learned Bishop Stillingfleet's argument 
in the same cause as a member of the House 
of Lords, when it was there heard, exhibits 
very clearly the nature of colleges and similar 
corporations. It is to the following effect: 
''That this absolute and conclusive power of 
visitors is no more than the law hath appoint- 
ed in other cases, upon commission of chari- 
table uses ; that the common law, and not any 
ecclesiastical canons, do place the power of 
visitation in the founder and his heirs, unless 
he settle it upon others; that altho corpora- 
tions for public government be subject to the 
courts of Westminster Hall, which have no 
particular or special visitors, yet corporations 
for charity founded and endowed by private 
persons, are subject to the rule and govern- 
ment of those that erect them ; but where the 
I^ersons to whom the charity is given are not 

26 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

incorporated, there is no such visitatorial 
power, because the interest of the revenue is 
not invested in them ; but where they are, the 
right of visitation ariseth from the founda- 
tion, and the founder may convey it to whom 
and in what manner he pleases; and the visi- 
tor acts as founder, and by the same authority 
which he had, and consequently is no more 
accountahle than he had been; that the king 
by his charter can make a society to be in- 
corporated so as to have the rights belonging 
to persons, as to legal capacities ; that colleges, 
altho founded by private persons, are yet in- 
corporated by the king's charter; but altho 
the kings by their charter made the colleges 
to be such in law — that is, to be legal corpora- 
tions — yet they left to the particular found- 
ers authority to appoint what statutes they 
thought fit for the regulation of them. And 
not only the statutes but the appointment of 
the visitors was left to them, and the manner 
of government, and the several conditions on 
which any persons were to be made or con- 
tinue partakers of their bounty. ' ' 

These opinions received the sanction of the 
House of Lords, and they seem to be settled 
and undoubted law. Where there is a charter, 
vesting proper powers in trustees or govern- 
ors, they are visitors ; and there is no control 
in anybody else, except only that the courts 
of equity or of law will interfere so far as to 
preserve the revenues and prevent the perver- 

27 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

sion of the funds, and to keep the visitors 
within their prescribed bounds. "If there be 
a charter with proper powers, the charity 
must be regulated in the manner prescribed by 
the charter. There is no ground for the con- 
trolling interposition of the courts of chan- 
cery. The interposition of the courts, there- 
fore, in those instances in which the charities 
were founded on charities or by act of Parlia- 
ment, and a visitor or governor and trustees 
appointed, must be referred to the general 
jurisdiction of the courts in all cases in which 
a trust conferred appears to have been abused, 
and not to an original right to direct the 
management of the charity, or the conduct of 
the governors and trustees." "The original 
of all visitatorial power is the property of the 
donor, and the power every one has to dispose, 
direct, and regulate his own property, like the 
case of patronage ; cujus est dare, etc. There- 
fore, if either the crown or the subject cre- 
ates an eleemosynary foundation, and vests 
the charity in the persons who are to receive 
the benefit of it, since a contest might arise 
about the government of it, the laws allow 
the founder or his heirs, or the person spe- 
cially appointed by him to be visitor, to de- 
termine concerning his own creature. If the 
charity is not vested in the persons who are 
to partake, but in trustees for their benefit, 
no visitor can arise by implication, but ths 
trustees have that power." 

28 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

"There is nothing better established," says 
Lord Commissioner Eyre, "than that this 
court does not entertain a general jurisdic- 
tion, or regulate and control charities estab- 
lished hy charter. There the establishment is 
fixt and determined, and the court has no 
power to vary it. If the governors estab- 
lished for the regulation of it are not those 
who have the management of the revenue, 
that court has no jurisdiction, and if it is 
ever so much abused, as far as it respects the 
jurisdiction of this court, it is without rem- 
edy; but if those established as governors 
have also the management of the revenues, 
this court does assume a jurisdiction of neces- 
sity, so far as they are to be considered as 
trustees of the revenue. ' ' 

"The foundations of colleges," says Lord 
Mansfield, ' ' are to be considered in two views ; 
namely, as they are corporations and as they 
are eleemosynary. As eleemosynary, they are 
the creatures of the founder; he may dele- 
gate his power, either generally or specially; 
he may prescribe particular modes and man- 
ners, as to the exercise of part of it. If he 
makes a general visitor (as by the general 
words visit at or sit), the person so constituted 
has all incidental power; but he may be re- 
strained as to particular instances. The 
founder may appoint a special visitor for a 
particular purpose, and no further. The 
founder may make a general visitor, and yet 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

appoint an inferior particular power, to be 
executed without going to the visitor in the 
first instance." And even if the king be 
founder, if he grant a charter, incorporating 
trustees and governors, they are visitors, and 
the king can not visit. A subsequent donation 
or ingrafted fellowship falls under the same 
general visitatorial power, if not otherwise 
specially provided. 

In New England, and perhaps throughout 
the United States, eleemosynary corporations 
have been generally established in the latter 
mode — that is, by incorporating governors, or 
trustees, and vesting in them the right of 
visitation. Small variations may have been 
in some instances adopted, as in the case of 
Harvard College, where some power of in- 
spection is given to the overseers, but not, 
strictly speaking, a visitatorial power, which 
still belongs, it is apprehended, to the fellows 
or members of the corporation. In general, 
there are many donors. A charter is obtained, 
comprizing them all, or some of them, and 
such others as they choose to include, with the 
right of appointing successors. They are thus 
the visitors of their own charity, and appoint 
others such as they may see fit, to exercise the 
same office in time to come. All such corpora- 
tions are private. The case before the court 
is clearly that of an eleemosjTiary corpora- 
tion. It is, in the strictest legal sense, a pri- 
vate charity. In King v. St. Catherine's Hall, 

30 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

that college is called a private eleemosynary 
lay corporation. It was endowed by a private 
founder, and incorporated by letters patent. 
And in the same manner was Dartmouth 
College founded and incorporated. Doctor 
Wheelock is declared by the charter to be its 
founder. It was established by him, on funds 
contributed and collected by himself. 

As such founder he had a right of visita- 
tion, which he assigned to the trustees; and 
they received it by his consent and appoint- 
ment, and held it under the charter. He ap- 
pointed these trustees visitors, and in that 
respect to take place of his heir, as he might 
have appointed devisees to take his estate in- 
stead of his heir. Little, probably, did he 
think, at that time, that the legislature would 
ever take away this property and these privi- 
leges and give them to others. Little did he 
suppose that this charter secured to him and 
his successors no legal rights. Little did the 
other donors think so. If they had, the college 
would have been, what the university is now, 
a thing upon paper, existing only in name. 

The numerous academies in New England 
have been established substantially in the 
same manner. They hold their property by 
the same tenure, and no other. Nor has Har- 
vard College any surer title than Dartmouth 
College. It may to-day have more friends, 
but to-morrow it may have more enemies. So 
also of Yale College, and, indeed, of all the 

31 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

others. When the legislature gives to these 
institutions it may and does accompany its 
grants with such conditions as it pleases. The 
grant of lands by the Legislature of New 
England to Dartmouth College, in 1789, was 
accompanied with various conditions. When 
donations are made, by the legislature or 
others, to a charity already existing, without 
any condition or the specification of any new 
use, the donation follows the nature of the 
charity. Hence the doctrine, that all eleemo- 
synary corporations are private bodies. They 
are founded by private persons, and on pri- 
vate property. The public can not be chari- 
table in these institutions. It is not the 
money of the public, but of private persons, 
which is dispensed. It may be public — that is, 
general — in the uses and advantages; and 
the state may very laudably add contribu- 
tions of its own to the funds; but it is still 
private in the tenure of the property and in 
the right of administering the funds. 

If the doctrine laid down by Lord Holt and 
the House of Lords, in Philips v. Bury, and 
recognized and established in all the other 
cases, be correct, the property of this college 
was private property; it was vested in the 
trustees by the charter, and to be administered 
by them, according to the will of the founder 
and donors, as exprest in the charter. They 
were also visitors of the charity, in the most 
ample sense. They had, therefore, as they 

32 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

contend, privileges, property and immunities, 
within the true meaning of the Bill of Rights. 
They had rights, and still have them, which 
they can assert against the legislature, as w^ell 
as against other wrong-doers. It makes no 
difference that the estate is holden for certain 
trusts. The legal estate is still theirs. They 
have a right in the property, and they have 
a right of visiting and superintending the 
trust; and this is an object of legal protec- 
tions as much as any other right. The char- 
ter declares that the powers conferred on the 
trustees are "privileges, advantages, liberties, 
and immunities"; and that they shall be for- 
ever holden by them and their successors. 
The New Hampshire Bill of Rights declares 
that no one shall be deprived of his ' ' property, 
privileges, or immunities," but by judgment 
of his peers or the law of the land. The argu- 
ment on the other side is, that, altho these 
terms may mean something in the Bill of 
Rights, they mean nothing in this charter. 
But they are terms of legal signification, and 
very properly used in the charter. They are 
equivalent with franchises. Blackstone says 
that franchises and liberty are used as synony- 
mous terms. And after enumerating other 
liberties and franchises, he says: "It is like- 
wise a franchise for a number of persons to be 
incorporated and subsist as a body politic, 
with a power to maintain perpetual succession 
and do other corporate acts; and each indi- 

33 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

vicinal member of such a corporation is also 
said to have a franchise or freedom. ' ' 

Liberties is the term used in Magna Charta 
as including franchises, privileges, immunities 
and all the rights which belong to that class. 
Professor Sullivan says the term signifies the 
'^privileges that some of the subjects, whether 
single persons or bodies corporate, have above 
others by the lawful grant of the king; as 
the chattels of felons or outlaws, and the lands 
and privileges of corporations.^' 

The privilege, then, of being a member of 
a corporation under a lawful grant, and of 
exercising the rights and powers of such mem- 
ber, is such a privilege, liberty , or franchise, 
as has been the object of legal protection and 
the subject of legal interest from the time of 
Magna Charta to the present moment. The 
plaintiffs have such an interest in this cor- 
poration, individually, as they could assert 
and maintain in a court of law, not as agents 
of the public, but in their own right. Each 
trustee has a franchise, and if he be disturbed 
in the enjoyment of it he would have redress 
on appealing to the law as promptly as for 
any other injury. If the other trustees should 
conspire against any one of them to prevent 
his equal right and voice in the appointment 
of a president or professor, or in the passing 
of any statute or ordinance of the college, he 
would be entitled to his action, for depriving 
him of his franchise. It makes no difference 

34 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

that this property is to be holden and admin- 
istered and these franchises exercised for the 
purpose of diffusing learning. No principle 
and no case establishes any such distinction. 
The public may be benefited by the use of this 
property. But this does not change the nature 
of the property or the rights of the owners. 
The object of the charter may be public good; 
so it is in all other corporations; and this 
would as well justify the resumption or viola- 
tion of the grant in any other case as in this. 
In the case of an advowson, the use is public, 
and the right can not be turned to any pri- 
vate benefit or emolument. It is nevertheless 
a legal private right, and the property of the 
owner as emphatically as his freehold. The 
rights and privileges of trustees, visitors, or 
governors, of incorporated colleges, stand on 
the same foundation. They are so considered, 
both by Lord Holt and Lord Hardwicke. 

To contend that the rights of the plaintiffs 
may be taken away because they derive from 
them no pecuniary benefit or private emolu- 
ment, or because they can not be transmitted 
to their heirs, or would not be assets to pay 
their debts, is taking an extremely narrow 
view of the subject. According to this notion 
the case would be different if, in the charter, 
they had stipulated for a commission on the 
disbursement of the funds; and they have 
lost any interest in the property by having 
undertaken to administer it gratuitously. 

35 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

It can not be necessary to say much in refu- 
tation of the idea that there can not be a legal 
interest or ownership in anj^thing which does 
not yield a pecimiary profit, as if the law re- 
garded no rights but the rights of money and 
of visible, tangible property. Of what nature 
are all rights of suffrage? No elector has a 
particular personal interest; but each has a 
legal right, to be exercised at his own discre- 
tion, and it can not be taken away from him. 
The exercise of this right directly and very 
materially affects the public, much more so 
than the exercise of the privileges of the 
trustees of this college. Consequences of the 
utmost magnitude may sometimes depend on 
the exercise of the right of suffrage by one 
or a few electors. Nobody was ever yet heard 
to contend, however, that on that account the 
public might take away the right or impair it. 
This notion appears to be borrowed from no 
better source than the repudiated doctrine of 
the three judges in the Aylesbury case. That 
was an action against a returning officer for 
refusing the plaintiff' 's vote in the election of 
a member of Parliament. Three of the judges 
of the King's Bench held that the action 
could not be maintained, because, among 
other objections, "it was not any matter of 
profit, either in presenti, or in futuro." It 
w^ould not enrich the plaintiff in presenti, nor 
would it in futuro go to his heirs, or answer to 
pay his debts. But Lord Holt and the House 

36 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

of Lords were of another opinion. The judg- 
ment of the three judges was reserved, and 
the doctrine they held, having been exploded 
for a century, seems now for the first time to 
be revived. 

Individuals have a right to use their own 
property for purposes of benevolence, either 
toward the public or toward other individ- 
uals. They have a right to exercise this 
benevolence in such lawful manner as they 
may choose; and when the government has 
induced and excited it by contracting to give 
perpetuitj^ to the stipulated manner of exer- 
cising it, it is not law^ but violence to rescind 
this contract and seize on the property. 
Whether the state will grant these franchises, 
and under what conditions it will grant them, 
it decides for itself. But when once granted 
the constitution holds them to be sacred till 
forfeited for just cause. 

That all property, of which the use may be 
beneficial to the public, belongs therefore to 
the public, is quite a new doctrine. It has 
no precedent, and is supported by no known 
principle. Doctor Wheelock might have an- 
swered his purposes in this case by executing 
a private deed of trust. He might have con- 
veyed his property to trustees for precisely 
such uses as are described in this charter. 
Indeed, it appears that he had contemplated 
the establishing of his school in that manner, 
and had made his will, and devised the prop- 

37 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

erty to the same persons who were afterward 
appointed trustees in the charter. Many lit- 
erary and other charitable institutions are 
founded in that manner, and the trust is 
renewed, and conferred on other persons from 
time to time, as occasion may require. In such 
a case no lawyer would or could say that 
the legislature might divest the trustees, con- 
stituted by deed or will, seize upon the prop- 
erty, and give it to other persons, for other 
purposes. And does the granting of a charter, 
which is only done to perpetuate the trust in 
a more convenient manner, make any differ- 
ence? Does or can this change the nature of 
the charity, and turn it into a public political 
corporation? Happily we are not without 
authority on the point. It has been considered 
and adjudged. Lord Hardwicke says, in so 
many words, ''The charter of the crown can 
not make a charity more or less public, but 
only more permanent than it would otherwise 
be." 

The granting of the corporation is but ma- 
king the trust perpetual, and does not alter 
the nature of the charity. The very object 
sought in obtaining such charter, and in giv- 
ing property to such a corporation, is to make 
and keep it private property, and to clothe 
it with all the security and inviolability of 
private property. The intent is, that there 
shall be a legal private ownership, and that 
the legal ov/ners shall maintain and protect 

33 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

the property for the benefit of those for whose 
use it was designed. Who ever endowed the 
public? Who ever appointed a legislature to 
administer his charity? Or who ever heard 
before that a gift to a college, or a hospital, or 
an asylum was, in reality, nothing but a gift 
to the state ? 

The State of Vermont is a principal donor 
to Dartmouth College. The lands given lie in 
that State. This appears in the special verdict. 
Is Vermont to be considered as having intend- 
ed a gift to the State of New Hampshire in 
this case, as, it has been said, is to be the 
reasonable construction of all donations to 
the college? The Legislature of New Hamp- 
shire affects to represent the public, and there- 
fore claims a right to control all property des- 
tined to public use. What hinders Vermont 
from considering herself equally the repre- 
sentative of the public, and from resuming 
her grants at her own pleasure ? Her right to 
do so is less doubtful than the power of New 
Hampshire to pass the laws in question. 

In University v. Foy, the Supreme Court 
of North Carolina pronounced unconstitu- 
tional and void a law repealing a grant to the 
University of North Carolina, altho that uni- 
versity was originally erected and endowed 
by a statute of the State. That case was a 
grant of lands, and the court decided that it 
could not be resumed. This is the grant of a 
power and a capacity to hold lands. Where 

39 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

is the difference of the cases upon principle? 

In Terrett v. Taylor this court decided that 
a legislative grant or confirmation of lands 
for the purpose of moral and religious instruc- 
tion could no more be rescinded than other 
grants. The nature of the use was not holden 
to make an}^ difference. A grant to a parish 
or church, for the purposes which have been 
mentioned, can not be distinguished, in re- 
spect to the title it confers, from a grant to 
a college for the promotion of piety and learn- 
ing. To the same purpose may be cited the 
case of Paivlett v. Clark. The State of Ver- 
mont, by statute, in 1794, granted to the re- 
spective towns in that State certain glebe 
lands lying within those towns for the sole 
use and support of religious worship. In 
1799 an act was passed to repeal the act of 
1794, but this court declared that the act of 
1794, "so far as it granted the glebes to the 
towns, could not afterward be repealed by 
the legislature, so as to divest the rights of 
the towns under the grant. ' ' 

It will be for the other side to show that 
the nature of the use decides the question 
whether the legislature has power to resume 
its grants. It will be for those who maintain 
such a doctrine to show the principles and 
cases upon Vvhich it rests. It will be for them 
also to fix the limits and boundaries of their 
doctrines, and to show what are and what are 
not such uses as to give the legislature this 

40 



STUDIES IN PROSE 



to furnish an answer to the cases cited, it 
will be for them further to show that a grant 
for the use and support of religious worship 
stands on other grounds than a grant for the 
promotion of piety and learning. 

I hope enough has been said to show that 
the trustees possest vested liberties, privi- 
leges and immunities under this charter ; and 
that such liberties, privileges and immunities, 
being once lawfully obtained and vested, are 
as inviolable as any vested rights of property 
whatever. Rights to do certain acts — such, 
for instance, as the visitation and superin- 
tendence of a college and the appointment of 
its officers — may surely be vested rights, to all 
legal intents, as completely as the right to 
possess property. A late learned judge of 
tliis court has said, "When I say that a right 
is vested in a citizen, I mean that he has the 
power to do certain actions, or to possess cer- 
tain things, according to the law of the land." 

If such be the true nature of the plaintiffs' 
interests under this charter, what are the 
articles in the New Hampshire Bill of Rights 
these acts infringe ? 

They infringe the second article, which says 
that the citizens of the State have a right to 
hold and possess property. The plaintiffs 
had a legal property in this charter, and they 
had acquired property under it. The acts 
deprive them of both. They impair and take 
awa}^ the charter; and tliey appropriate the 

41 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

property to new uses against their consent. 
The plaintiffs can not now hold the property 
acquired by themselves, and which this article 
says they have a right to hold. 

They infringe the twentieth article. By 
that article it is declared that, in questions of 
property, there is a right to trial. The plain- 
tiffs are divested without trial or judgment. 

They infringe the twenty-third article. It 
is therein declared that no restrospective laws 
shall be passed. This article bears directly on 
the case. These acts must be deemed to be 
retrospective, within the settled construction 
of that term. What a retrospective law is has 
been decided, on the construction of this very 
article, in the Circuit Court for the First Cir- 
cuit. The learned judge of that circuit says : 
"Every statute which takes away or impairs 
vested rights, acquired under existing laws, 
must be deemed retrospective. ' ' That all such 
laws are retrospective was decided also in the 
case of Dash v. Van Kleeh, where a most 
learned judge quotes this article from the 
Constitution of New Hampshire, with mani- 
fest approbation, as a plain and clear expres- 
sion of those fundamental and unalterable 
principles of justice which must lie at the 
foundation of every free and just system of 
laws. Can any man deny that the plaintiffs 
had rights under the charter which were 
legally vested, and that by these acts those 
rights are impaired? 

42 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

' ' It is a principle in the English law, ' ' says 
Chief Justice Kent, in the case last cited, *'as 
ancient as the law itself, that a statute, even 
of its omnipotent Parliament, is not to have 
a retrospective effect. ' Nova Constitutio f utu- 
ris formam imponere debet, et non prseteri- 
tis. ' The maxim in Bracton was taken from 
the civil law, for we find in that system the 
same principle, exprest substantially in the 
same words, that the law-giver can not alter 
his mind to the prejudice of a vested right. 
' Nemo potest mutare concilium suum in alteri- 
us injuriam. ' This maxim of Papinian is gen- 
eral in its terms, but Doctor Taylor applies it 
directly as a restriction upon the law-giver, 
and a declaration in the code leaves no doubt 
as to the sense of the civil law. 'Leges et 
constitutiones futuris certum est dare formam 
negotiis, non ad facta pr^eterita revocari, nisi 
nominatim, et de praBterito tempore, et adhuc 
pendentibus negotiis cautum sit.' This pas- 
sage, according to the best interpretation of 
the civilians, relates not merely to future suits, 
but to future, as contradistinguished from 
past, contracts and vested rights. It is, in- 
deed, admitted that the prince may enact a 
retrospective law, provided it be done express- 
ly; for the will of the prince under the 
despotism of the Roman emperors was para- 
mount to every obligation. Great latitude 
was anciently allowed to legislative exposi- 
tions of statutes, for the separation of the 

43 



PRx^CTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

judicial from the legislative power was not 
then distinctly known or prescribed. The 
prince Avas in the habit of interpreting his 
own laws for particular occasions. This was 
called the ' Interlocutio Principis,' and this, 
according to Ruber's definition, was 'Quando 
principes inter partes loquuntur et jus dicunt. ' 
No correct civilian, and especially no proud 
admirer of the ancient republic (if any such 
then existed), could have reflected on this 
interference with private rights and pending 
suits without disgust and indignation ; and we 
are rather surprized to find that, under the 
violent and arbitrary genius of the Roman 
Government, the principle before us should 
have been acknowledged and obeyed to the 
extent in which we find it. The fact shows 
that it must be founded in the clearest justice. 
Our case is happily very different from that 
of the subjects of Justinian. With us the- 
power of the law-giver is limited and defined ; 
the judicial is regarded as a distinct, inde- 
pendent power; private rights are better un- 
derstood and more exalted in public estima- 
tion, as well as secured by provisions dictated 
by the spirit of freedom, and unknown to the 
civil law. Our constitutions do not admit the 
power assumed by the Roman princes, and the 
principle we are considering is now to be re- 
garded as sacred. ' ' 

These acts infringe also the thirty-seventh 
article o£ the Constitution of New Hampshire, 

44 



STUDIES IN PROSE 



which says that the powers of governinent 
shall be kept separate. By these acts the 
legislature assumes to exercise a judicial 
power. It declares a forfeiture and resumes 
franchises, once granted, without trial or hear- 
ing. 

If the constitution is not altogether waste- 
paper, it has restrained the power of the 
legislature in these particulars. If it has any 
meaning, it is that the legislature shall pass 
no act directly, and manifestly impairing pri- 
vate property and private privileges. It shall 
not judge by act. It shall not decide by act. 
But it shall leave all these things to be tried 
and adjudged by the laws of the land. 

The fifteenth article has been referred to 
before. It declares that no one shall be "de- 
prived of his property, immunities, or privi- 
leges, but by the judgment of his peers or 
the law of the land." Notwithstanding the 
light in which the learned judges in New 
Hampshire viewed the rights of the plaintiffs 
under the charter, and which has before been 
adverted to, be admitted to their opinion that 
those rights are privileges within the fifteenth 
article of the Bill of Rights. Having quoted 
that article, they say, ' ' That the right to man- 
age the affairs of this college is a privilege, 
within the meaning of this clause of the Bill 
of Rights, is not to be doubted." In my 
humble opinion, this surrenders the point. 
To resist the effect of tliis admission, however, 

45 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

the learned judges add: ^'But how a privi- 
lege can be protected from the operation of 
the law of the land by a clause in the consti- 
tution declaring that it shall not be taken 
away but by the law of the land, is not very 
easily understood." This answer goes on the 
ground that the acts in question are laws of 
the land within the meaning of the constitu- 
tion. If they be so, the argument drawn from 
this article is fully answered. If they be not 
so, it being admitted that the plaintiffs ' rights 
are "privileges," within the meaning of the 
article, the argument is not answered, and the 
article is infringed by the acts. 

Are, then, these acts of the legislature 
which affect only particular persons and their 
particular privileges, laws of the land? Let 
this question be answered by the text of 
Blackstone. "And first it {i.e., law) is a 
rule — not a transient, sudden order from a 
superior to or concerning a particular person, 
but something permanent, uniform and uni- 
versal. Therefore, a particular act of the 
legislature to confiscate the goods of Titus, or 
to attaint him of high treason, does not enter 
into the idea of a municipal law, for the opera- 
tion of this act is spent upon Titus only, and 
has no relation to the commnity in general; 
it is rather a sentence than a law." Lord 
Coke is equally decisive and emphatic. Citing 
and commenting on the celebrated twenty- 
ninth chapter of Magna Charta, he says : "No 

45 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

man shall be disseized, etc., unless it be by 
the lawful judgment, that is, verdict of equals, 
or by the law of the land, that is (to speak it 
once for all), by the due course and process of 
law." Have the plaintiffs lost their fran- 
chises by ''due course and process of law?" 
On the contrary, are not these acts "particu- 
lar acts of the legislature, which have no rela- 
tion to the community in general, and which 
are rather sentences than laws ? ' ' 

By the law of the land is most clearly in- 
tended the general law, a law which hears 
before it condemns, which proceeds upon in- 
quiry, and renders judgment only after trial. 
The meaning is, that every citizen shall hold 
his life, liberty, property and immunities 
under the protection of the general rules 
which govern society. Everything which may 
pass under the form of an enactment is not 
therefore to be considered the law of the land. 
If this were so, acts of the attainer, bills of 
pains and penalties, acts of confiscation, acts 
of reversing judgments, and acts directly 
transferring one man's estate to another, leg- 
islative judgments, decrees, and forfeitures in 
all possible forms, would be the law of the land. 

Such a strange construction would render 
constitutional provisions of the highest im- 
portance completely inoperative and void. 
It would tend directly to establish the union 
of all powers in the legislature. There would 
be no general, permanent law for courts to 

47 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

administer or men to live under. The admin- 
istration of justice of the country. ''Is that 
the law of the land, ' ' says Mr. Burke, ' ' upon 
which, if a man go to Westminster Hall, and 
ask counsel by what title of tenure he holds 
his pri\Tilege or estate according to the law of 
the land, he should be told that the law of 
the land is not yet known; that no decision 
or decree has been made in his case ; that when 
a decree shall be passed, he will then know 
what the law of the land isf Will this be said 
to be the law of the land by any lawyer who 
has a rag of a gown left upon his back or a 
wig with one tie upon his head f ' ' 

That the power of electing and appointing 
the officers of this college is not only a right 
of the trustees as a corporation, generally and 
in the aggregate, but that each individual 
trustee has also his own individual franchise 
in such rights of election and appointment, 
is according to the language of all the author- 
ities. Lord Holt says: "It is agreeable to 
reason and the rules of law that a franchise 
should be vested in the corporation aggregate, 
and yet the benefit of it to redound to the 
particular members, and to be enjoyed by 
them in their private capacity. Where the 
privilege of election is used by particular per- 
sons, it is a particular right vested in every 
particular man.'' 

It is also to be considered, that the presi- 
dent and professors of this college have rights 

48 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

to be altected by these acts. Their interest is 
similar to that of fellows in the English col- 
leges, because they derive their living, wholly 
or in part, from the founders' bounty. The 
president is one of the trustees or corporators. 
The professors are not necessarily members 
of the corporation; but they are appointed 
by the trustees, and removable by them, and 
have fixt salaries payable out of the general 
funds of the college. Both president and 
professors have freeholds in their offices, sub- 
ject only to be removed by the trustees, as 
their legal visitors, for good cause. All the 
authorities speak of fellowships in colleges as 
freeholds, notwithstanding the fellows may be 
liable to be suspended or removed for mis- 
behavior by their constituted visitors. 

Nothing could have been less expected in 
this age than that there should have been an 
attempt, by acts of the legislature, to take 
away these college livings, the inadequate but 
the only support of literary men who have 
devoted their lives to the instruction of youth. 
The president and professors were appointed 
by the twelve trustees. They were accountable 
to nobody else, and could be removed by no- 
body else. They accepted their offices on this 
tenure. Yet the legislature has appointed 
other persons, with power to remove these 
officers and to deprive them of their livings, 
and those other persons have exercised that 
pow^r. No description of private property 

49 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

has been regarded as more sacred than college 
livings. They are the estates and freeholds 
of a most deserving class of men, of scholars 
who have consented to forego the advantages 
of professional and public enjoyments, and 
to devote themselves to science and literature 
and the instruction of youth in the quiet re- 
treats of academic life. Whether to dispossess 
and oust them, to deprive them of their office, 
and to turn them out of their livings; to do 
this, not by the power of their legal visitors 
or governors, but by acts of the legislature, 
and to do it without forfeiture and without 
fault; whether all this be not in the highest 
degree an indefensible and arbitrary pro- 
ceeding, is a question of which there would 
seem to be but one side for a lawyer or a 
scholar to espouse. 

Of all the attempts of James II to overturn 
the law and the rights of his subjects, none 
was esteemed more arbitrary or tyrannical 
than his attack on Magdalen College, Oxford ; 
and yet that attempt was nothing but to put 
out one president and put in another. The 
president of that college, according to the 
charter and statutes, is to be chosen by the fel- 
lows who are the corporators. There being 
a vacancy, the king chose to take the appoint- 
ment out of the hands of the fellows, the 
legal electors of a president, into his own 
hands. He therefore sent down his mandate, 
commanding the fellows to admit for presi- 

50 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

dent a person of his nomination ; and, inas- 
much as this was directly against the charter 
and constitution of the college, he was pleased 
to add a non obstante clause of sufficiently 
comprehensive import. The fellows were 
commanded to admit the person mentioned in 
the mandate, "any statute, custom or consti- 
tution to the contrary notwithstanding, where- 
with we are graciously pleased to dispense in 
this behalf." The fellows refused obedience 
to this mandate, and Doctor Hough, a man of 
independence and character, was chosen presi- 
dent by the fellows, according to the charter 
and statutes. The king then assumed the 
power, in virtue of his prerogative, to send 
down certain commissioners to turn him out, 
which was done accordingly, and Parker, a 
creature suited to the times, put in his place. 
Because the president, who was rightfully 
and legally elected, would not deliver the keys 
the doors were broken open. "The nation as 
well as the university," says Bishop Burnet, 
"looked on all these proceedings with just in- 
dignation. It was thought an open piece of 
robbery and burglary when men, authorized 
by no legal commission, came and forcibly 
turned men out of their possession and free- 
hold." Mr. Hume, altho a man of different 
temper and of other sentiments, in some re- 
spects, than Doctor Burnet, speaks of this 
arbitrary attempt of prerogative in terms not 
less decisive. ' ' The president, and all the f el- 

51 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

lows," says he, "except two, who complied, 
were expelled the college, and Parker was put 
in possession of the office. This act of vio- 
lence, of all those which were committed dur- 
ing the reign of James, is perhaps the most 
illegal and arbitrary. When the dispensing 
power was the most strenuously insisted on by 
court lawyers, it had still been allowed that 
the statutes which regard private property 
could not legally be infringed by that pre- 
rogative. Yet, in this instance, it appeared 
that even these were not now secured from 
invasion. The privileges of a college are at- 
tacked; men are illegally dispossest of their 
property for adhering to their duty, to their 
oaths, and to their religion. ' ' 

This measure King James lived to repent, 
after repentance was too late. "When the 
charter of London was restored the other 
measures of violence were retracted to avert 
the impending revolution ; the expelled presi- 
dent and fellows of Magdalen College were 
permitted to resume their rights. It is evi- 
dent that this was regarded as an arbitrary 
interference with private property. Yet pri- 
vate property was not otherwise attacked than 
as a person was appointed to administer 
and enjoy the revenues of a college in a man- 
ner and by persons not authorized by the 
constitution of the college. A majority of 
the members of the corporation would not 
comply with the king's wishes. A minority 

52 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

would. The object was, therefore, to make 
this minority a majority. To this end the 
king's commissioners were directed to inter- 
fere in the case, and they united with the 
two complying fellows and expelled the rest, 
and thus effected a change in the govern- 
ment of the college. The language in which 
Mr. Hume and all the other writers speak of 
this abortive attempt of oppression shows 
that colleges were esteemed to be, as they 
truly are, private corporations, and the prop- 
erty and privileges which belong to them pri- 
vate property and private privileges. Court 
lawyers were found to justify the king in dis- 
pensing with the laws — that is, in assuming 
and exercising a legislative authority. But 
no lawyer, not even a court lawyer in the 
reign of King James II, as far as appears, 
was found to say that, even by this high 
authority, he could infringe the franchise of 
the fellows of the college and take away their 
livings. Mr. Hume gives the reason: It is, 
that such franchise were regarded in a most 
emphatic sense as private proper^ty. If it 
could be made to appear that the trustees 
and the president and professors held their 
offices and franchises during the pleasure of 
the legislature, and that the property holden 
belonged to the State, then the legislature 
have done no m^ore than they had a right to 
do. But this is not so. The charter is a 
charter of privileges and immunities; and 

53 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

these are holden by the trustees expressly 
against the State forever. 

It is admitted that the State, by its courts 
of law, can enforce the will of the donor, and 
compel a faithful execution of the trust. The 
plaintiffs claim no exemption from legal re- 
sponsibility. They hold themselves at all 
times answerable to the law of the land for 
their conduct in the trust committed to them. 
They ask only to hold the property of which 
they are owners, and the franchises which be- 
long to them, until they shall be found, by 
due course and process of law, to have for- 
feited them. 

It can make no difference whether the leg- 
islature exercises the power it has assumed 
by removing the trustees and the president 
and the professors, directly and by name, or 
by appointing others to expel them. The 
principle is the same, and in the point of fact 
the result has been the same. If the entire 
franchise can not be taken away, neither can 
it be essentially impaired. If the trustees 
are legal owners of the property, they are sole 
owners. If they are visitors, they are sole 
visitors. No one will be found to say that, if 
the legislature may do what it has done, it 
may not do anything and everything which 
it may choose to do, relative to the property 
of the corporation and the privileges of the 
members and officers. 

If the view which has been taken of this 

54 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

question be at all correct, this was an eleemo- 
synary corporation, a private charity. The 
property was private property. The trustees 
were visitors, and the right to hold the char- 
ter, administer the funds and visit and govern 
the college was a franchise and privilege, 
solemnly granted to them. The use being 
public in no way diminishes their legal estate 
in the property, or their title to the franchise. 
There is no principle, nor any case, which de- 
clares that a gift to such a corporation is a 
gift to the public. The acts in question vio- 
late property. They take away privileges, 
immunities and franchises. They deny to the 
trustees the protection of the law; and they 
are retrospective in their operation. In all 
which respects they are against the Constitu- 
tion of New Hampshire. 

The plaintiffs contend, in the second place, 
that the acts in question are repugnant to 
the tenth section of the first article of the 
Constitution of the United States. The mate- 
rial words of that section are: ^'No State 
shall pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto 
law, or law impairing the obligation of con- 
tracts." 

The object of these most important provi- 
sions in the national Constitution has often 
been discust, both here and elsewhere. It is 
exhibited with great clearness and force by 
one of the distinguished persons who framed 
that instrument. "Bills of attainder, ex post 

55 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation 
of contracts, are contrary to the first prin- 
ciples of sound legislation. The two former 
are expressly prohibited by the declaration 
prefixt to some of the State constitutions, and 
all of them prohibited by the spirit and scope 
of these fundamental charters. Our own ex- 
periences have taught us, nevertheless, that 
additional fences against these dangers ought 
not to be omitted. Very properly, therefore, 
have the convention added this constitutional 
bulwark in favor of personal security and 
private rights; and I am much deceived if 
they have not in so doing as faithfully con- 
sulted the genuine sentiments as the undoubt- 
ed interests of their constituents. The sober 
people of America are weary of the fluctuat- 
ing policy which has directed the public coun- 
cils. They have seen with regret and with 
indignation that sudden changes and legisla- 
tive interferences in cases affecting personal 
rights become jobs in the hands of enter- 
prising and influential speculators and snares 
to the more industrious and less informed 
part of the community. They have seen, too, 
that one legislative interference is but the 
link of a long chain of repetitions; every 
subsequent interference being naturally pro- 
duced by the efl^ects of the proceeding." 

It has already been decided in this court 
that a grant is a contract, within the meaning 
of this provision ; and that a grant by a State 

S6 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

is also a contract, as much as the grant of an 
individual. In the case of Fletcher v. Peck, 
this court says: "A contract is a compact 
between two or more parties, and is either 
executory or executed. An executory con- 
tract is one in which a party binds himself 
to do, or not to do, a particular thing; such 
was the law under which the conveyance was 
made by the government. A contract exe- 
cuted is one in which the object of the con- 
tract is performed ; and this, says Blackstone, 
differs in nothing from a grant. The contract 
between Georgia and the purchasers was ex- 
ecuted, as well as one which is executory, con- 
tains obligations binding on the parties. A 
grant, in its own nature amounts to an ex- 
tinguishment of the right of grantor, and im- 
plies a contract not to reassert that right. 
If, under a fair construction of the consti- 
tution, grants are comprehended under the 
term contracts, is a grant from the State ex- 
cluded from the operation of the provision? 
Is this clause to be considered as inhibiting 
the State from impairing the obligation of 
contracts between two individuals, but as ex- 
cluding from that inhibition contracts made 
with itself? The w^ords themselves contain 
no such distinction. They are general, and are 
applicable to contracts mad? with the State, 
and are to be exempted from their opera- 
tion ; the exception must arise from the char- 
acter of the contracting part}^, not from the 

57 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

words which are employed. Whatever re- 
spect might have been felt for the State sov- 
ereignties, it is not to be disguised that the 
f ramers of the Constitution viewed with some 
apprehension the violent acts which might 
grow out of the feeling of the moment; and 
that the people of the United States, in adopt- 
ing that instrument, have manifested a deter- 
mination to shield themselves and their prop- 
erty from the effects of those sudden and 
strong passions to which men are exposed. 
The restrictions on the legislative power of 
the States are obviously founded in this senti- 
ment; and the Constitution of the United 
States contains what may be deemed a bill 
of rights for the people of each State. It has 
also been decided that a grant by a State be- 
fore the Revolution is as much to be protected 
as a grant since. But the case of Terrett v. 
Taylor, before cited, is of all others most per- 
tinent to the present argument. Indeed, the 
judgment of the court in that case seems to 
leave little to be argued or decided in this. 
*'A private corporation," says the court, 
*' created by the legislature may lose its fran- 
chises by a misuser or a nonuser of them ; and 
they may be resumed by the government un- 
der a judicial judgment upon a quo warranto 
to ascertain and enforce the forfeiture. Thi^ 
is the common law of the land, and is a tacit 
condition annexed to the creation of every 
such corporation. Upon a change of govern- 

58 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

ment, too, it may be admitted, that such ex- 
clusive privileges attached to a private cor- 
poration as are inconsistent with the new gov- 
ernment may be abolished. In respect also 
to public corporations which exist only for 
public purposes, such as counties, towns, 
cities, and so forth, the legislature may, under 
proper limitations, have a right to change, 
modify, enlarge, or restrain them, securing, 
however, the property for the uses of those 
for whom and at whose expense it was origi- 
nally purchased. But that the legislature 
can repeal statutes creating private corpora- 
tions, or confirming to them property already 
acquired under the faith of previous laws, 
and by such repeal can vest the property of 
such corporations exclusively in the State, or 
dispose of the same to purposes as they please, 
without the consent or default of the corpo- 
rators, we are not prepared to admit; and 
we think ourselves standing upon the prin- 
ciples of natural justice, upon the funda- 
mental laws of every free government, upon 
the spirit and the letter of the Constitution 
of the United States, and upon the decisions 
of most respectable judicial tribunals, in re- 
sisting such a doctrine." 

This court, then, does not admit the doc- 
trine that a legislature can repeal statutes cre- 
ating private corporations. If it can not re- 
peal them altogether, of course, it can not 
repeal any part of them, or impair them, or 

59 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

essentially alter them, without the consent of 
the corporators. If, therefore, it has shown 
that this college is to be regarded as a private 
charity, this case is embraced within the very 
terms of that decision. A grant of corporate 
powers and privileges is as much a contract as 
a grant of land. What proves all charters of 
this sort to be contracts is, that they must be 
accepted to give them force and effect. If 
they are not accepted they are void. And in 
the case of an existing corporation, if a new 
charter is given it, it may even accept part 
and reject the rest. In Bex. v. Vice-ChanceU 
lor of Cambridge, Lord Mansfield says: 
*' There is a vast deal of difference between 
a new charter granted to a new corporation 
(who must take it as it is given) and a new 
charter given to a corporation already in being, 
and acting either under a former charter or 
under prescriptive usage. The latter, a cor- 
poration already existing, are not obliged to 
accept the new charter in toto, and to receive 
either all or none of it ; they must act partly 
under it, and partly under their old charter 
or prescription. The validity of these new 
charters must turn upon the acceptance of 
them." In the same case Mr. Justice Wil- 
mot says : ' ' It is the concurrence and accept- 
ance of the university that gives the force to 
the charter of the crown." In the King v. 
Pasmore, Lord Kenyon observes: "Some 
things are clear: When a corporation exists 

60 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

capable of discharging its functions, the 
crown can not obtrude another charter upon 
them; they may either accept or reject it." 

In all cases relative to charters, the accept- 
ance of them is uniformly alleged in the 
pleadings. This shows the general under- 
standing of the law, that they are grants or 
contracts, and that parties are necessary to 
give them force and validity. In King v. 
Di\ Askew, it is said, "The crown can no^ 
oblige a man to be a corporator without his 
consent; he shall not be sujjject to the in- 
conveniences of it without accepting it and 
assenting to it." These terms, "acceptance" 
and "assent," are the very language of con- 
tract. In Ellis V. Marshall it is expressly ad- 
judged that the naming of the defendant 
among others, in an act of incorporation, did 
not of itself make him a corporator ; and that 
his assent was necessary to that end. The 
court speaks of the act of incorporation as a 
grant, and observes, ' ' That a man may refuse 
a grant, whether from the government or an 
individual, seems to be a principle too clear 
to require the support of authorities." But 
Justice Buller, in Kiiig v. Pasmore, furnishes, 
if possible, a still more direct and explicit 
authority. Speaking of a corporation for 
government, he says : " I do not know how to 
reason on this point better than in the man- 
ner urged by one of the relator's counsel, 
who considered the grant of incorporation to 

61 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

be a compact between the crown and a cer- 
tain number of the subjects, the latter of 
whom undertake, in consideration of the priv- 
ileges which are bestowed to exert themselves 
for the good government of the place. ' ' This 
language applies with peculiar propriety and 
force to the case before the court. It was in 
consequence of the "privileges bestowed" 
that Doctor Wheelock and his associates un- 
dertook to exert themselves for the instruc- 
tion and education of youth in this college; 
and it was on the same consideration that the 
founder endowed it with his property. 

And because charters of incorporation are 
of the nature of contracts, they can not be 
altered or varied but by consent of the origi- 
nal parties. If a charter be granted by the 
king, it may be altered by a new charter 
granted by the king, and accepted by the 
corporators. But if the first charter be 
granted by Parliament, the consent of Parlia- 
ment must be obtained to any alteration. In 
King v. Miller, Lord Kenyon says, "Where 
a corporation takes its rise from the king's 
charter, the king by granting, and the cor- 
poration by accepting another charter may 
alter it, because it is done with the consent of 
all parties who are competent to consent to 
the alteration." 

There are, in this case, all the essential con- 
stituent parts of a contract. There is some- 
thing to be contracted about. There are 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

parties, and there are plain terms in which 
the ar^ment of the parties on the subject of 
the contract is exprest. There are mutual 
considerations and inducements. The charter 
recites that the founder, on his part, has 
agreed to establish his seminary in New 
Hampshire, and to enlarge it beyond its origi- 
nal design, among other things, for the benefit 
of that province ; and thereupon a charter is 
given to him and his associates, designated by 
himself, promising and assuring to them, un- 
der the plighted faith of the State, the right 
of governing the college and administering 
its concerns in the manner provided in the 
charter. There is a complete and perfect 
grant to them of all the power of superin- 
tendence, visitation and government. Is not 
this a contract? If lands or money had been 
granted to him and his associates for the same 
purposes, such grant could not be rescinded. 
And is there any difference in legal contem- 
plation between a grant of corporate fran- 
chises and a grant of tangible property? No 
such difference is recognized in any decided 
case, nor does it exist in the common appre- 
hension of mankind. 

It is therefore contended that this case falls 
within the true meaning of this provision of 
the Constitution, as expounded in the deci- 
sions of this court; that the charter of 1769 
is a contract, a stipulation or agreement, 
mutual in its considerations, express and 

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formal in its terms, and of a most binding 
and solemn nature. That the acts in question 
impair this contract has already been suffi- 
ciently shown. They repeal and abrogate its 
most essential parts. 

A single observation may not be improper 
on the opinion of the court of New Hamp- 
shire, which has been published. The learned 
judges who delivered that opinion have 
viewed this question in a very different light 
from that in which the plaintiffs have en- 
deavored to exhibit it. After some general 
remarks, they assume that this college is a 
public corporation, and on this basis their 
judgment rests. Whether all colleges are not 
regarded as private and eleemosynary cor- 
porations by all law writers and all judicial 
decisions ; whether this college was not found- 
ed by Doctor Wheelock; whether the charter 
was not granted at his request, the better to 
execute a trust, which he had already created ; 
whether he and his associates did not become 
visitors by the charter; and whether Dart- 
mouth College be not, thereof, in the strictest 
sense, a private charity, are questions which 
the learned judges do not appear to have 
discust. 

It is admitted in that opinion that, if it be 
a private corporation, its rights stand on the 
same ground as those of an individual. The 
great question, therefore, to be decided is, 
to which class of corporations do colleges thus 

64 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

founded belong"? And the plaintiffs have en- 
deavored to satisfy the court that, according 
to the well-settled principles and uniform de- 
cisions of law, they are private, eleemosynary 
corporations. 

Much has heretofore been said on the neces- 
sity of admitting such power in the legisla- 
ture as has been assumed in this case. Many 
cases of possible evil have been imagined, 
which might otherwise be without remedy. 
Abuses, it is contended, might arise in the 
management of such institutions which the 
ordinary courts of law would be unable to 
correct. But this is only another instance of 
that habit of supposing extreme cases, and 
then of reasoning from them, which is the 
constant refuge of those who are obliged to 
defend a cause which, upon its merits, is in- 
defensible. It would be sufficient to say in 
answer that it is not pretended that there was 
here any such case of necessity. But a still 
more satisfactory answer is that the appre- 
hension of danger is growing less, and there- 
fore the whole argument fails. Experience 
has not taught us that there is danger of great 
evils or of great inconvenience from this 
source. Hitherto, neither in our own country 
nor elsewhere have such cases of necessity 
occurred. The judicial establishment of the 
State are presumed to be competent to pre- 
vent abuses and violations of trust, in cases of 
this kind as well as in others. If they be not, 

65 



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they are imperfect, and their amendment 
would be a most proper subject for legisla- 
tive wisdom. Under the government and pro- 
tection of the general laws of the land these 
institutions have always been found safe, as 
well as useful. They go on, with the progress 
of society, accommodating themselves easily, 
without sudden change or violence, to the 
alternations which take place in its condition, 
and in the knowledge, the habits and pur- 
suits of men. The English colleges were 
founded in Catholic ages. Their religion was 
reformed with the general reformation of the 
nation; and they are suited perfectly well 
to the purpose of educating the Protestant 
youth of modern times. Dartmouth College 
was established under a charter granted by 
the Provincial Government; but a better con- 
stitution for a college, or one more adapted 
to the condition of things under the present 
government, in all material respects, could 
not now be framed. Nothing in it was found 
to need alteration at the Revolution. The wise 
men of that day saw in it one of the best hopes 
of future times, and commended it as it was, 
with parental care, to the protection and 
guardianship of the government of the State. 
A charter of more liberal sentiments, of wiser 
provisions drawn with more care, or in a bet- 
ter spirit, could not be expected at any time 
or from any source. The college needed no 
change in its organiz-ation or government. 

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That which it did need was the kindness, the 
patronage, the bounty of the legislature; not 
a mock elevation to the character of a uni- 
versity, without the solid benefit of a shilling's 
donation to sustain the character; not the 
swelling and empty authority of establishing 
institutes and other colleges. This unsubstan- 
tial pageantry would seem to have been in de- 
rision of the scanty endowment and limited 
means of an unobtrusive but useful and grow- 
ing seminary. Least of all was there a neces- 
sity, or pretense of necessity, to infringe its 
legal rights, violate its franchises and privi- 
leges, and pour upon it these overwhelming 
streams of litigation. 

But this argument from necessity would 
equally apply in all other cases. If it be 
well founded, it would prove that, whenever 
any inconvenience or evil is experienced from 
the restrictions imposed on the legislature by 
the Constitution, these restrictions ought to 
be disregarded. It is enough to say that the 
people have thought otherwise. They have, 
most wisely, chosen to take the risk of occa- 
sional inconvenience from the want of power, 
in order that there might be a settled limit 
to its exercise and a permanent security 
against its abuse. They have imposed pro- 
hibitions and restraints; and they have not 
rendered these altogether vain and nugatory 
by conferring the power of dispensation. If 
inconvenience should arise which the legisla- 

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PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

ture can not remedy under the power con- 
ferred upon it, it is not answerable for such 
inconvenience. That which it can not do 
within the limits prescribed to it, it can not 
do at all. No legislature in this country is 
able — and may the time never come when it 
shall be able — to apply to itself the memora- 
ble expression of a Roman pontiff: ^' Licet 
hoc de jure non possumus, voliimus tamen de 
'plenitudine potestatis.'^ 

The case before the court is not of ordinary 
importance nor of every-day occurrence. It 
has a wide-spread and vital interest. It 
affects not this college only, but every col- 
lege, and all the literary institutions of the 
country. They have flourished hitherto, and 
have become in a high degree respectable and 
useful to the community. They have all a 
common principle of existence, the inviola- 
bility of their charters. It will be a danger- 
ous, a most dangerous experiment, to hold 
these institutions subject to the rise and fall 
of popular parties and the fluctuations of 
political opinions. If the franchise may be 
at any time taken away or impaired, the prop- 
erty also may be taken away or its use per- 
verted. Benefactors will have no certainty 
of effecting the object of their bounty, and 
learned men will be deterred from devoting 
themselves to the service of such institutions 
from the precarious title of their offices. Col- 
leges and halls will be deserted by all better 

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spirits and become a theater for the conten- 
tions of politics. Party and faction will be 
cherished in the places consecrated to piety 
and learning. These consequences are neither 
remote nor possible only. They are certain 
and immediate. 

When the court in North Carolina declared 
the law of the State, which repealed a grant 
to its university, unconstitutional and void, 
the legislature had the candor and the wis- 
dom to repeal the law. This example, so hon- 
orable to the State which exhibited it, is most 
fit to be followed on this occasion. And there 
is good reason to hope that a State, which has 
hitherto been so much distinguished for tem- 
perate counsels, cautious legislation and re- 
gard to law, will not fail to adopt a course 
which will in every respect most completely 
accord with her highest, noblest, and best in- 
terests, and in no small degree elevate her 
reputation. 

It was for many and obvious reasons most 
anxiously desired that the question of the 
power of the legislature over this charter 
should have been finally decided in the State 
court. An earnest hope was entertained that 
the judges of the court might have viewed 
the case in a light favorable to the rights of the 
trustees. This hope has failed. It is here 
that those rights are now to be maintained, 
or they are prostrated forever. "Omnia alia 
perfugia bonorum, subsidia, consilia, auxilia, 

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jura ceciderunt. Quern enim alium appellem ? 
quern obtester? quern implorem? Nisi hoc 
loco, nisi apud vos, nisi per vos, judices, salu- 
tem nostram, quaa spe exi^a extremaque pen- 
det, tenuerimus; nihil est pr^eterea quo con- 
fugere possimus." 



70 



WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM 

BY THOMAS CARLYLE 

WILLIAM Pitt, Earl of Ciiatham, the 
second son of Robert Pitt, Esq., of 
Boconnock, in the county of Corn- 
wall, was born on the 15th of November, 1708. 
The family was originally of Blandford, in 
Dorsetshire. Christopher Pitt, the translator 
of Vida and Vergil, and Thomas Pitt, Gov- 
ernor of Madras in the reign of Queen Anne, 
were both of this place. The latter was Chat- 
ham's grandfather, and likewise remarkable 
as having purchased, during his residence in 
the East, the jewel known by the name of the 
Pitt Diamond, which weighed 127 carats, and 
was afterward sold by him to the King of 
France for 135,000 lire, having originally cost 
20,400 lire. It may also be worthy of men- 
tion that, by the wife of this gentleman, Chat- 
ham was descended from the Regent Murray, 
natural son of James V of Scotland. 

Of Chatham's youth and early habits little 
is recorded, except that he studied at Eton as 
a foundation-scholar; was removed to Trin- 
ity College, Oxford, in 1726, and left the 
university without taking any degree. His 
proficiency in the attainments usually ac- 
quired there may, however, be inferred from 
the circumstance that some Latin verses of 

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his were judged fit to appear in the collection 
printed by that learned body on the death of 
George I ; and still more, certainly, from the 
predilection for classical pursuits which he 
displayed in after life, and the decidedly clas- 
sical tincture which pervades all his composi- 
tions. Demosthenes is said to have been so 
great a favorite with him that he repeatedly 
translated certain of his orations into Eng- 
lish. 

The immediate cause of his removal from 
Oxford was a hereditary gout, which had al- 
ready attacked him at Eton in his sixteenth 
year. He sought to expel the disorder by 
traveling. He made the tour of France, and 
visited Italy, but without realizing his pur- 
pose ; his gout still adhered to him, it preyed 
upon his constitution throughout life, and 
never left him till it gained the mastery. To 
an ordinary mind this malady would have 
proved a severe misfortune; Pitt found 
means to convert it into almost an advantage. 
Excluded by it from the ga3^eties and dissi- 
pations of common life, he applied himself 
the more earnestlj^ to the acquisition of knowl- 
edge. He read, and wrote, and studied, en- 
deavoring by every method in his power to 
cultivate those faculties which were one day 
to become the ornament of his age and nation. 

In the meantime, however, his immediate 
prospects were by no means magnificent. He 
had lost his father in 1727 ; a scanty fortune 

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and a sickl}^ frame made him anxious for some 
fixt appointment; and he was glad to accept 
a commission of cornet in the Blues, which 
some of his friends had interest enough to 
procure for him. But his inclinations pointed 
to a different scene. The leisure which his 
duties left him was still sedulously conse- 
crated to the improvement of his mind, and 
he longed to employ in public life those tal- 
ents he had been so careful to perfect. In 
1735 this opportunity was granted him. He 
was that year returned member for Old Sa- 
rum, to serve in the Ninth Parliament of 
Great Britain. The appearance he made there 
was such as to justify all his hopes and to 
awaken hopes still more glorious. His elo- 
quence soon became the pride of his friends 
and the terror of all that opposed him. A 
fine voice and figure prepossest the hearers 
in his favor, and the sentiments and opinions 
which he uttered bespoke a great and noble 
mind. There was in him a stern, inexpiable 
contempt for meanness in whatever shape; a 
fervid enthusiasm for the cause of freedom, 
for the honor of his country, for all good and 
worthy things; the whole tempered and ma- 
tured by a strong, commanding intellect, the 
force and justness of which might have 
seemed scarcely compatible with so much 
youthful ardor. His acquired advantages 
gave full scope to those gifts of nature. 
The style he employed was chaste, regular and 

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argumentative, yet both splendid and impas- 
sioned, and the energetic graces of his de- 
livery gave new power to what he spoke. 
When warmed with his subject, when pour- 
ing forth his own glowing feelings and em- 
phatic convictions, in language as glowing 
and emphatic, the attitude of conscious 
strength which he assumed, his lofty looks, 
his indignant glance, would dismay the stout- 
est and most subtle of his opponents ; and the 
veterans of Parliament have stood abashed in 
the presence of a youth. Sir Robert Walpole, 
in his pride of place, with all the dexterity of 
ministerial management which a life had been 
spent in acquiring, was awed before this 
champion of simple virtue. Detected in his 
sophistries, stigmatized for his corruptions, 
baffled in his attempts at retaliation or de- 
fense, this intriguing statesman came at 
length to dread, as the signal of defeat, the 
very sound of his adversary's voice. "Let 
us before all things," said he, "try to muzzle 
this terrible cornet of horse." 

But the enterprise was ineffectual, the cor- 
net was not to be "muzzled"; and if Sir 
Robert still believed in his favorite maxim, 
that every man has his price, it must have 
mortified him to discover that the price of 
Pitt was not within the compass of his gift. 
Unable to gain over, he took the imperfect 
satisfaction of alienating still further. Pitt 
was deprived of his commission in the army; 

74 



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and this stroke of official severity, while it 
confirmed him in his opposition, rendered him 
still dearer to the public, whose rights he was 
asserting. It strengthened him also in the 
favor of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the cen- 
ter at that period of all who aimed at a change 
of men and measures. Pitt was appointed 
groom of the bed-chamber to the prince in 
the year 1737. He continued in the succes- 
sive sessions of Parliament to support the 
same liberal principles which he had at first 
adopted, the increase of years increasing his 
experience in the principles of policy and gov- 
ernment without seeming to abate the ardor 
of his zeal. He distinguished himself by his 
animated hostility to the Spanish Convention 
in 1738, and generally by his aversion to 
every measure that appeared likely to injure 
the rights of the subject or the lasting in- 
terests of the country. His speeches contribu- 
ted not a little to the dowTifall of Sir Robert 
Walpole. One of his most brilliant displays 
is preserved in the reported debate on a mo- 
tion for an inquiry into the last ten years of 
that statesman's administration. The motion, 
tho carried in the House of Commons, was 
defeated of its object by a ministerial maneu- 
ver; but it sealed the ruin of the Walpole 
party, and yet affords a striking indication of 
the powers of this young and ardent and en- 
lightened politician. 

The Pelhams, who succeeded Walpole, 

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wishing to secure the cooperation of Pitt, at- 
tempted to get him brought into office ; but a 
formidable obstacle stood in the way. The 
King was offended at Pitt for joining with the 
heir apparent to oppose the favorite minister 
and his Hanoverian politics; he refused to 
consent to his admission. The Pelhams re- 
signed in consequence, but were shortly after- 
ward reinstated, and brought Pitt along with 
them as vice-treasurer of Ireland in 1746. 
This post was soon converted into that of 
treasurer, and then exchanged for the place 
of privy-counselor, and paymaster-general of 
the forces. His conduct in this latter situa- 
tion served to display the disinterested in- 
tegrity of his nature; he disdained to retain 
any portion of the public money in his hands 
to profit by its interest, or by speculating with 
it in the funds, tho his predecessors had acted 
thus without scruple; he even refused the 
usual perquisites of his office, when they 
seemed unmerited by the duties of it. Such 
a manner of proceeding seemed to exmplify 
in practise the high principles which he had 
prof est as an orator; it sanctioned and aug- 
mented the favor in which he had long stood 
over all the empire. "With the king it was less 
successful. George II still viewed Pitt with 
a jealous eye, and Pitt was still inflexible in 
maintaining what he thought the true ad- 
vantage of Britain against all the frowns of 
royalty and the intrigues of court. In the 

76 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

beginning of the seven years' war, when His 
Majesty returned from the continent, and 
presented the subsidiary treaties he had made 
with Hesse Cassel and Prussia for the defense 
of his beloved Hanover, Pitt did not hesitate 
to speak in Parliament against their ratifica- 
tion. He was, in consequence, dismist from 
office, and ]\Ir. Legge, who has partaken in 
his fault, partook also in his punishment. 
This was in 1755. 

Pitt was now again a private man, but sur- 
rounded with a blaze of reputation which few 
ministers would not have envied. The long 
and brave struggle he had made in defense 
of their privileges endeared him to the peo- 
ple ; his virtue, proved alike in place and out 
of it, gave a new and more steady luster to 
the splendor which his high talents shed 
around him. In 1744 the Duchess of Marl- 
borough had left him a legacy of £10,000, 
"upon account," as her testament exprest it, 
* ' of his merit in the noble defense he has made 
for the support of the laws of England, and 
to prevent the ruin of his country." Eleven 
years had now elapsed since the date of this 
splendid testimonial, nine of which had been 
spent in office, amid temptations such as have 
ruined the fame of many a patriot; yet still 
his popularity had continued to augment, and 
his late disfavor at court, by investing him 
with something of the grace of a martyr, had 
raised it to a higher pitch than ever. Men 

77 



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called him the Great Commoner; he was lis- 
tened to by the nation as its guardian and 
father. 

Happy in these circumstances of his pub- 
lic situation, Pitt was also happy in his do- 
mestic circle. In 1754 he had married Hes- 
ter, only daughter of Richard Grenville, Esq., 
and of the Countess of Temple, a lady whose 
accomplishments, and graces, and affection 
formed a permanent solace to him throughout 
the remainder of his life. In a short time 
also he had reason to applaud the wisdom of 
his own anticipations and to pity the inca- 
pacity of the actual ministers. He spoke 
loudly against the policy of sending English 
money to defend Hanover by subsidies; he 
reprobated the idea of introducing Hano- 
verian soldiers to defend England. The 
course of events strongly seconded his reason- 
ing; the beginning of the seven years' w^ar 
was marked to Britain by nothing but dis- 
asters; the nation murmured; addresses and 
petitions called vehemently for a change, and 
the universal voice named Pitt as the man. 
His Majesty was again obliged to treat with 
this discarded servant. A new ministry was 
formed in 1756, in which Pitt took the post 
of Secretary of State, his friend Mr. Legge 
being Chancellor of the Exchequer. His Maj- 
esty's repugnance and difficulties are strongly 
marked by the fact that having a second time 
dismissed Pitt for his inflexible opposition to 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

the Duke of Cumberland as general of the 
German war, he was again forced by the pub- 
lic opinion to recall him with the most ample 
concessions. Pitt resumed his place of Secre- 
tary on the 29th of June, 1757, and formed a 
cabinet according to his own choice. His per- 
sonal influence, of course, was the predomi- 
nating; he was unfettered by conflicting col- 
leagues; even the king's prepossessions began 
to abate. Pitt, in their preliminary interview, 
had said to him, "Sire, give me your confi- 
dence and I will deserve it." His Majesty 
had answered, ''Deserve it, and you shall have 
it. ' ' There was at least henceforth no visible 
discordance between them. 

It was now that the genius of Pitt shone 
forth with unclouded splendor in the eyes of 
all Europe. Unconstrained in his movements, 
the vigor of his own mind seemed to pervade 
every department of the public service; its 
influence was soon felt in the remotest corners 
of the globe. He found the nation deprest 
and degraded; in three years he raised it to 
a height of greatness which it had never be- 
fore attained. Devoting himself wholly to 
the duties of his office, entirely avoiding the 
pageantry of levees and public exhibitions, 
he bent himself with all his might to mature 
the plans he had formed for the national 
advantage and to discover fit instruments for 
realizing them. The extent of his informa- 
tion, the quickness of his understanding, en- 

79 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

abled him at once to discover where the enemy 
was most assailable; his projects, magnificent 
as the mind that conceived them, were ex- 
amined and provided for with the most scru- 
pulous accuracy, and put in execution with 
an energy that insured success. The people 
were averse to any interference in the Con- 
tinental war; Pitt objected less to the fact of 
interference than to the actual manner of it. 
Dismissing the Duke of Cumberland from the 
command of the army, to which the conven- 
tion at Kloster-sieben had shown too well that 
he was unequal, he assisted Frederick of Prus- 
sia by subsidies, and gave the English troops 
to be led by Ferdinand of Brunswick. Some 
outcry was raised against him at first ; it was 
thought he should have shaken off the interest 
of Hanover entirely. But he underwent these 
censures, persevered in his measures, and 
*' conquered America in Germany," as he 
predicted. The French being occupied in 
these continental expeditions, and Frederick 
assisted by British gold to make head against 
them, their colonies and distant possessions 
were left ill guarded, and fell an easy prey 
to the vigorous attacks of the English. Be- 
fore 1760 they had lost nearly all their foreign 
settlements; they were banished from Africa 
and Asia, and the Canadas had yielded to the 
heroism of Wolfe; the navy of France had 
scarcely an existence; her own coasts were 
continually insulted, and her people kept in 

80 ^ 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

constant terror of invasion. The talents and 
diligence of Pitt, the skill with which he ad- 
ministered the resources of Britain, had raised 
her to be the arbitress of Europe. 

But all his triumphs abroad were insuffi- 
cient to secure him against the vicissitudes 
of faction at home. In 1760 the king died, 
and the dependents of his successor, George 
III, began to look with eagerness for a change. 
It is hinted also that Pitt was not too agree- 
able to some of his colleagues. The great and 
uniform success of all his enterprises had ex- 
alted his reputation to a height which it was 
painful for a competitor to contemplate ; and 
his habit of seeing every obstacle give way 
to the commanding effort of his will had 
strengthened in him that rigidness of manner, 
that imposing inflexibility of purpose, which 
his friends might dignify as the natural ex- 
pression of a lofty and self-dependent mind^ 
but which his enemies did not fail to brand 
with the name of arrogance or domineering 
ambition. The court sought a cause of quar- 
rel with him, and one was not long occurring. 
By the accuracy of his intelligence he had 
discovered the existence of that family com- 
pact between the French and Spanish branch- 
es of the house of Bourbon, the secret influ- 
ence of which had rendered abortive some 
recent attempts at making peace. "With 
his characteristic decision, Pitt immediately 
moved for a declaration of war against Spain 

81 



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and a vigorous attack on her foreign posses- 
sions. He judged it better to surprize the 
enemy than be surprized by him; and the 
treachery of Spain seemed to authorize the 
omission of preliminary complaints and nego- 
tiations. The rest of the cabinet thought 
otherwise; the question was debated keenly; 
Pitt's opinion was overruled, and hints were 
given that his concurrence was no longer in- 
dispensable. The popularity of a young king, 
and the national desire for peace, w^arranted 
them in such proceedings ; but it was against 
the minister's principle to incur responsibil- 
ity w^here he had not the management. He 
resigned his office in October, 1761. The ap- 
plause of all good men accompanied him in 
his retreat; he had the character of the most 
able and virtuous of statesmen. His private 
fortune was likewise increased by an annuity 
of £3,000, conferred on him at his resignation, 
to last during his life and that of his lady. 
The total inattention he had always mani- 
fested to his individual interests while man- 
aging the concerns of the public rendered this 
annuity a necessary gift. His lady w^as fur- 
ther honored wdth the rank of the peerage, 
conferred on her by the title of Baroness of 
Chatham. 

Again reduced to a private station, Pitt 
attended chiefly to his duties in Parliament; 
and, without uniting himself to anj^ party 
in the State, he kept a watchful eye over the 

82 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

public conduct of ministers, delivering his 
sentiments in the same fearless spirit which 
had hitherto distinguished all his public ex- 
hibitions. When the Peace of Paris, which 
his own exertions had done so much to bring 
about, was to be concluded in 1762, he ex- 
prest himself warmly against the terms of it 
— against the smallness of the benefit likely 
to result to England from the commanding 
attitude she had maintained throughout the 
latter years of the war. On the question of 
general warants, arising from the case of 
Wilkes, in 1764, he delivered an animated 
speech against the legality of such exertions 
of official prerogative, reminding his hearers 
"that an Englishman's house w^as his castle, 
defended not indeed by battlements and bul- 
warks, but by the impassable tho unseen bar- 
rier of law. It might be a straw-built shed, 
into which every wind of heaven might enter ; 
but the king could not, the king dared not." 
That his popularity remained undiminished 
was evinced by a fact striking enough in it- 
self, and more so as it regarded him. Sir 
AYilliam Pynsent, of Burton-Pynsent, in the 
County of Somerset, passed over his own 
family in order to bequeath an estate of £3,000 
a year to this distinguished patriot. Already 
had the commencement of his political life 
been dignified by a similar tribute of appro- 
bation ; it must have been doubly gratifying 
to find the same testimony still more unequiv- 

83 



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ocally renewed when the busiest and most 
dangerous part of it was past. 

Pitt was again to be a minister, but never 
so happy a one as he had been already. In 
1766 the necessities of the government once 
more called him to a share in it; the forma- 
tion of a new cabinet was intrusted to him, 
but the undertaking did not prosper in his 
hands. His brother-in-law and old associate, 
Lord Temple; his friend, the Marquis of 
Rockingham, could not enter in his views or 
act along with him, and the Great Conunoner 
had offended many of his favorers by accept- 
ing a peerage. He v/as made Earl of Chat- 
ham and Baron of Burton-Pynsent prior to 
his entrance upon office. Of his ministry 
Mr. Burke has left us a curious and often- 
quoted description. The members of it were 
the most heterogeneous and discordant: the 
results they produced betrayed the feebleness 
of their union. Chatham resigned in two 
years, disgusted with the untowardness of 
his coadjutors, and tired of useless exertions 
to bend their clashing principles to a con- 
formity with his own. 

This was the last time he appeared in office. 
His strength and health were exhausted; 
years and excessive labor had increased the 
violence of his constitutional disorder; he 
wanted retirement and repose. His peerage 
had shut against him the habitual scene of 
his parliamentary exertions; he was not a 

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constant attendant in the House of Lords; 
but when some great question called him forth 
from his retreat, the fire of his genius still 
shone with unabated brilliancy. The chief 
theme of his oratory from this period was the 
quarrel wth the American colonies, the in- 
terests and claims of which now began to 
occupy the principal share of the public at- 
tention. Chatham resisted the imposition of 
taxes on them; he warmly seconded the re- 
peal of the Stamp Act. But when war had 
been undertaken — above all, when France 
had taken part in it — he was resolute in con- 
tinuing in arms at whatever risk. The memo- 
rable scene in which he displayed his anxiety 
on this head is well known. On the 7th of 
April, 1778, the Duke of Richmond having 
moved an address to the King, in which the 
necessity of admitting the independence of 
America was broadly insinuated, Chatham 
deprecated such a consummation in the 
strongest terms. '^I rejoice," said he, ''that 
the grave has not closed upon me, that I am 
still alive to life up my voice against the dis- 
memberment of this ancient and noble mon- 
archy. Prest down as I am by the load of 
infirmity I am little able to assist my country 
in this most perilous conjuncture; but, my 
lords, while I have sense and memory I never 
will consent to tarnish the luster of this nation 
by an ignominious surrender of its rights and 
fairest possessions. Shall a people, so lately 

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the terror of the world, now fall prostrate 
before the House of Bourbon? It is impos- 
sible ! In God 's name, if it is absolutely nec- 
essary to declare either for peace or war, and 
if peace can not be preserved with honor, 
why is not war commenced without hesitation ? 
I am not, I confess, well informed of the 
resources of this kingdom, but I trust it has 
still sufficient to maintain its just rights tho 
I know them not. Any state, my lords, is 
better than despair. Let us at least make one 
effort; and if we must fall, let us fall like 
men. ' ' The duke replied, and Chatham made 
an eager effort to rise that he might speak 
further; but in vain, his voice was never 
more to be heard in that senate which it had 
so often dignified and delighted. He stag- 
gered, laid his hand upon his bosom, fainted, 
and was caught in the arms of the lords who 
sat near him and sprang to his assistance. 
They carried him into an adjoining room, 
and the House immediately adjourned. Med- 
ical assistance being procured, he was con- 
veyed to his villa at Hayes, in Kent, wherfe 
he lingered only till the following 11th of 
May, and then died, in the seventieth year of 
his age. 

The circumstances of his death, combined 
with the general character of his life, render 
that event peculiarlj^ impressive. News of it 
being conveyed to London by express. Colonel 
Barre reported the intelligence to Parliament, 

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where it suspended all other business. The 
sense which the public entertained of their 
loss was manifested by the honors done to his 
memory. Party differences seemed to be for- 
got ; all joined in voting that his debts should 
be paid by the nation, and that a yearly sum 
of £4,000 should be permanently added from 
the civil list to the title he had borne. He 
was buried in Westminster Abbey with all 
the pomp of a public funeral, and a piece of 
sculpture was afterward erected by way of 
monument, representing the last scene of his 
parliamentary life, and inscribed as the trib- 
ute of the King and Parliament to the Earl 
of Chatham. 

The chief lineaments of Chatham's char- 
acter may be gathered from the most meager 
chronicle of his actions. That he was a man 
of a splendid and impetuous genius — adapted 
for the duties of an orator by the vehemence 
of his feelings and the rich gifts of his intel- 
lect; for the duties of a statesman by his 
vastness of conception, his unwearied assidu- 
ity in ordering, his inflexible energ}^ in execu- 
tion — the highest and the humblest qualities 
that should combine to form a public man — 
may be learned from contemplating any por- 
tion of his public life. A survey of the whole 
v/ill better show in how extraordinary a de- 
gree he possest these requisites, and how rich- 
ly he adorned them all by a truly noble style 
of sentiment, a rigid adherence to the great 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

principles of honor and generosity, and every 
manly virtue. And as his mind was singu- 
larly elevated, so had his fortune been sin- 
gularly good. Few men that have acted so 
conspicuous a part have united so great a 
plurality of suffrages in their favor. The 
reason is that he founded no sect, was the 
father of no party, but of the party that love 
their country and labor for it; having thus 
been a genuine catholic in politics, his merits 
are admitted by all. Accordingly, the clam- 
ors that assailed him in life, the voice of 
obloquy and opposition, the memory of his 
failings, have long since died quite away, and 
Chatham is one in praise of whom the bitter- 
est of partymen forgot their bitterness. He 
stands in the annals of Europe ' ' an illustrious 
and venerable name," admired by country- 
men and strangers, by all to whom loftiness 
of moral principle and greatness of talent are 
objects of regard. 

**His private life," says Lord Chesterfield, 
*'was stained by no vice, nor sullied by any 
meanness. All his sentiments were liberal and 
elevated. His ruling passion was an unbound- 
ed ambition, which, when supported by great 
abilities and crowned by great success, makes 
what the world calls a great man. He was 
haughty, imperious, impatient of contradic- 
tion, and overbearing — qualities which too 
often accompany, but always clog, great ones. 
He had manners and address ; but one might 

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discover through them too great a conscious- 
ness of his own superior talents. He was a 
most agreeable and lively companion in social 
life, and had such a versatility of wit that he 
could adapt it to all sorts of conversation. 
He had a most happy turn to poetry, but 
seldom indulged and seldom avowed it. His 
eloquence was of every kind, and he excelled 
in the argumentative as well as the declama- 
tory way. But his invectives were terrible, 
and uttered with such energy of diction and 
such dignity of action and countenance, that 
he intimidated those who were most willing 
and best able to encounter him. Their arms 
fell out of their hands, and they struck under 
the ascendant which his genius gained over 
theirs. ' ' 

If Chatham's faculties had not been more 
worthily employed we might have regretted 
that he left so few memorials of them in a 
literary shape. Many of his speeches, under 
all the deformities of incorrect reporting, are 
full of beauty; and a volume of "Letters" 
to his nephew, published some years ago, may 
be read with a pleasure independent of their 
author. See "Life of Chatham," in 3 vol- 
umes, and the public histories of the time. 



89 



ON THE ATHENIAN ORATORS 

BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 

' ' To the famous orators repair, 
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence 
Wielded at will that fierce democratic. 
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece 
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne," 

— Milton. 

THE celebrity of the great classical writers 
is confined within no limits, except 
those which separate civilized from 
savage man. Their works are the common 
property of every polished nation. They have 
furnished subjects for the painter and models 
for the poet. In the minds of the educated 
classes throughout Europe their names are in- 
dissolubly associated w^ith the endearing recol- 
lections of childhood — the old schoolroom, the 
dog-eared grammar, the first prize, the tears 
so often shed and so quickly dried. So great 
is the veneration with which they are regard- 
ed that even the editors and commentators 
who perform the lowest menial offices to their 
memory are considered, like the equerries and 
chamberlains of sovereign princes, as entitled 
to a high rank in the table of literary prece- 
dence. It is, therefore, somewhat singular 
that their productions should so rarely have 
been examined on just and philosophical prin- 
ciples of criticism. 

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The ancient writers themselves afford us 
but little assistance. When they particular- 
ize they are commonly trivial; when they 
would generalize they become indistinct. An 
exception must, indeed, be made in favor of 
Aristotle. Both in analysis and in combina- 
tion that great man was without a rival. No 
philosopher has ever possest, in an equal de- 
gree, the talent either of separating established 
system into their primary elements, or of 
connecting detached phenomena in harmoni- 
ous systems. He w^as the great fashioner of 
the intellectual chase; he changed its dark- 
ness into light, and its discord into order. He 
brought to literary researches the same vigor 
and amplitude of mind to which both physical 
and metaphysical science are so greatly in- 
debted. His fundamental principles of criti- 
cism are excellent. To cite only a single in- 
stance: The doctrine which he established, 
that poetry is an imitative art when justly 
understood, is to the critic what the compass 
is to the navigator. With it he may venture 
upon the most extensive excursions. Without 
it he must creep cautiously along the coast, 
or lose himself in a trackless expanse, and 
trust, at best, to the guidance of an occasional 
star. It is a discovery which changes a caprice 
into a science. 

The general propositions of Aristotle are 
valuable. But the merit of the superstructure 
bears no proportion to that of the foundation. 

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This is partly to be ascribed to the character 
of the philosopher, who, tho qualified to do 
all that could be done by the resolving and 
combining powers of the understanding, seems 
not to have possest much of sensibility or 
imagination. Partly, also, it may be attrib- 
uted to the deficiency of materials. The great 
works of genius which then existed were not 
either sufficiently numerous or sufficiently 
varied to enable any man to form a perfect 
code of literature. To require that a critic 
should conceive classes of composition which 
had never existed, and then investigate their 
principles, would be as unreasonable as the 
demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his 
magicians first to tell him his dream and then 
to interpret it. 

With all his deficiencies, Aristotle was the 
most enlightened and profound critic of an- 
tiquity. Dionysius was far from possessing 
the same exquisite subtility, or the same vast 
comprehension. But he had access to a much 
greater number of specimens, and he had de- 
voted himself, as it appears, more exclusively 
to the study of elegant literature. His pecu- 
liar judgments are of more value than his 
general principles. He is only the historian 
of literature. Aristotle is its philosopher. 

Quintilian applied to general literature the 
same principles by which he had been accus- 
tomed to .judge of the declamations of his 
pupils. He looks for nothing but rhetoric, 

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and rhetoric not of the highest order. He 
speaks coldly of the incomparable works of 
^schylus. He admires beyond expression 
those inexhaustible mines of commonplaces, 
the plays of Euripides. He bestoAvs a few 
vague words on the poetical character of 
Homer. He then proceeds to consider him 
merely as an orator. An orator Homer doubt- 
less was, and a great orator. But surely noth- 
ing is more remarkable, in his admirable works 
than the art with which his oratorical powers 
are made subservient to the purposes of poet- 
ry. Nor can I think Quintilian a great critic 
in his own province. Just as are many of his 
remarks, beautiful as are many of his illus- 
trations, we can perpetually detect in his 
thoughts that flavor which the soil of despot- 
ism generally communicates to all the fruits 
of genius. Eloquence was, in his time, little 
more than a condiment which served to stimu- 
late in a despot the jaded appetite for pane- 
gyric, an amusement for the traveled nobles 
and the blue-stocking matrons of Rome. It is, 
therefore, with him rather a sport than a war ; 
it is a contest of foils, not of swords. He ap- 
pears to think more of the grace of the atti- 
tude than of the direction and vigor of the 
thrust. It must be acknowledged, in justice 
to Quintilian, that this is an error to which 
Cicero has too often given the sanction, both 
of his precept and of his example. 

Longinus seems to have had great sensi- 

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bility but little discrimination. He gives us 
eloquent sentences, but no principles. It was 
happily said that Montesquieu ought to have 
changed the name of his book from L' Esprit 
des Lois to L 'Esprit sur les Lois. In the same 
manner the philosopher of Palmyra ought to 
have entitled his famous work, not ' ' Longinus 
on the Sublime," but ''The Sublimities of 
Longinus." The origin of the sublime is one 
of the most curious and interesting subjects 
of inquiry that can occupy the attention of a 
critic. In our own country it has been discust 
with great ability, and, I think, with very 
little success, by Burke and Dugald Stuart. 
Longinus dispenses himself from all investi- 
gations of this nature by telling his friend, 
Terentianus, that he already knows everything 
that can be said upon the question. It is to 
be regretted that Terentianus did not impart 
some of his knowledge to his instructor, for 
from Longinus we learn only that sublimity 
means height, or elevation. This name, so 
commodiously vague, is applied indifferently 
to the noble prayer of Ajax in the Iliad, and 
to a passage of Plato about the human body, 
as full of conceits as an ode of Cowley. Hav- 
ing no fixt standard, Longinus is right only 
by accident. He is rather a fancier than a 
critic. 

Modern writers have been prevented by 
many causes from supplying the deficiencies 
of their classical predecessors. At the time 

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of the revival of literature no man could^ 
without great and painful labor, acquire an 
accurate and elegant knowledge of the ancient 
languages. And, unfortunately, those gram- 
matical and philological studies, without 
which it was impossible to understand the 
great works of Athenian and Roman genius, 
have a tendency to contract the views and 
deaden the sensibility of those who follow 
them with extreme assiduity. A powerful 
mind, which has been long em.ployed in such 
studies, may be compared to the gigantic 
spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded 
to contract himself to small dimensions in 
order to enter within the enchanted vessel, 
and, when his prison had been closed upon 
him, found himself unable to escape from the 
narrow boundaries to the measure of which 
he had reduced his stature. When the means 
have long been the objects of application they 
are naturally substituted for the end. It was 
said by Eugene of Savoy, that the greatest 
generals have commonly been those who have 
been at once raised to command, and intro- 
duced to the great operations of war, without 
being employed in the petty calculations and 
maneuvers which employ the time of an in- 
ferior officer. In literature the principle is 
equally sound. The great tactics of criticism 
will, in general, be best understood by those 
who have not had much practise in drilling 
syllables and particles. 

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I remember to have observed among the 
French Anas a ludicrous instance of this. A 
scholar, doubtless of great learning, recom- 
mends the study of some long Latin treatise,, 
of which I now forget the name, on the relig- 
ion, manners, government and language of the 
early Greeks. "For there," says he, "you 
will learn everything of importance that is 
contained in the Iliad and Odyssey, without 
the trouble of reading two such tedious 
books." Alas! it had not occurred to the 
poor gentleman that all the knowledge to 
which he attached so much value was useful 
only as it illustrated the great poems which 
he despised, and would be as worthless for any 
other purpose as th-? mythology of Caffragia 
or the vocabulary of Otaheite. 

Of those scholars who have disdained to 
confine themselves to verbal criticism few 
have been successful. The ancient languages 
have, generally, a magical influence on their 
faculties. They were ' ' fools called into a cir- 
cle by Greek invocations." The Iliad and 
^neid were to them not books, but curiosities, 
or, rather, relics. They no more amired those 
works for their merits than a good Catholic 
venerates the house of the Virgin at Loretto 
for its architecture. Whatever was classical 
was good. Homer was a great poet, and so 
was Calimachus. The epistles of Cicero were 
fine, and so were those of Phalaris. Even with 
respect to questions of evidence they fell into 

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the same error. The authority of all narra- 
tions written in Greek or Latin was the same 
with them. It never crossed their minds that 
the lapse of five hundred years, or the distance 
of five hundred leagues, could affect the ac- 
curacy of a narration ; that Livy could be a 
less veracious historian than Polybius, or that 
Plutarch could know less about the friends of 
Xenophon than Xenophon himself. Deceived 
by the distance of time, they seem to consider 
all the Classics as contemporaries; just as I 
have known people in England, deceived by 
the distance of place, take it for granted that 
all persons who live in India are neighbors, 
and ask an inhabitant of Bombay about the 
health of an acquaintance at Calcutta. It is 
to be hoped that no barbarian deluge will ever 
again pass over Europe. But, should such a 
calamity happen, it seems not improbable that 
some future RoUin or Gillies will compile a 
history of England from Miss Porter's "Scot- 
tish Chiefs," Miss Lee's "Recess," and Sir 

Nathaniel Wraxall 's ' ' Memoirs. ' ' 

It is surely time that ancient literature 
should be examined in a different manner, 
without pedantical prepossessions, but with a 
just allowance at the same time for the differ- 
ence of circumstances and manners. I am far 
from pretending to the knowledge or ability 
which such a task would require. I merely 
offer a collection of desultory remarks upon 
a most interesting portion of Greek literature. 

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It may be doubted whether any composi- 
tions which have ever been produced in the 
world are equally perfect in their kind with 
the great Athenian orations. Genius is sub- 
ject to the same laws which regulate the pro- 
duction of cotton and molasses. The supply 
adjusts itself to the demand. The quantity 
may be diminished by restrictions and multi- 
plied by bounties. The singular excellence to 
which eloquence attained at Athens is to be 
mainly attributed to the influence which it 
exerted there. In turbulent times, under a 
constitution purely democratic, among a peo- 
ple educated exactly to that point at which 
men are most susceptible of strong and sud- 
den impressions, acute, but not sound reason- 
ers, warm in their feelings, unfixt in their 
principles, and passionate admirers of fine 
composition, oratory received such encourage- 
ment as it has never since obtained. 

The taste and knowledge of the Athenian 
people was a favorite object of the contemptu- 
ous derision of Samuel Johnson, a man who 
knew nothing of Greek literature beyond the 
common school-books, and who seems to have 
brought to what he had read scarcely more 
than the discernment of a common schoolboy. 
He used to assert, with that arrogant absurd- 
ity which, in spite of his great abilities and 
virtues, renders him, perhaps, the most ridicu- 
lous character in literary history, that De- 
mosthenes spoke to a people of brutes — to a 

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barbarous people ; that there could have been 
no civilization before the invention of print- 
ing. Johnson was a keen but a very narrow- 
minded observer of mankind. He perpetually 
confounded their general nature with their 
particular circumstances. He knew London 
intimately. The sagacity of his remarks on 
its society is perfectly astonishing. But Fleet 
Street was the world to him. He saw that 
Londoners who did not read were profoundly 
ignorant; and he inferred that a Greek, who 
had few or no books, must have been as un- 
informed as one of Mr. Thrale's draymen. 

There seems to be, on the contrary, every 
reason to believe that, in general intelligence, 
the Athenian populace far surpassed the lower 
orders of any community that has ever ex- 
isted. It must be considered that to be a citi- 
zen was to be a legislator, a soldier, a judge — 
one upon whose voice might depend the fate 
of the wealthiest tributary state, of the most 
eminent public man. The lowest offices, both 
of agriculture and of trade, were, in common, 
performed by slaves. The commonwealth sup- 
plied its meanest members with the support of 
life, the opportunity of leisure, and the means 
of amusement. Books were indeed few; but 
they were excellent, and they were accurately 
known. It is not by turning over libraries, 
but by repeatedly perusing and intently con- 
templating a few great models, that the mind 
is best disciplined. A man of letters must 

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now read much that he soon forgets, and 
much from which he learns nothing worthy to 
be remembered. The best works employ, in 
general, but a small portion of his time. De- 
mosthenes is said to have transcribed six times 
the history of Thucydides. If he had been a 
young politician of the present age he might, 
in the same space of time, have skimmed in- 
numerable newspapers and pamphlets. I do 
not condemn that desultory mode of study 
which the state of things in our day renders a 
matter of necessity. But I may be allowed 
to doubt w^hether the changes on which the 
admirers of modern institutions delight to 
dwell have improved our condition so much in 
reality as in apearance. Rumford, it is said, 
proposed to the Elector of Bavaria a scheme 
for feeding his soldiers at a much cheaper rate 
than formerly. His plan was simply to com- 
pel them to masticate their food thoroughly. 
A small quantity thus eaten would, according 
to that famous projector, afford more suste- 
nance than a large meal hastily devoured. I 
do not know how Rumford 's proposition was 
received ; but to the mind, I believe, it will be 
found more nutritious to digest a page than 
to devour a volume. 

Books, however, were the least part of the 
education of an Athenian citizen. Let us, for 
a moment, transport ourselves, in thought, to 
that glorious city. Let us imagine that we 
are entering its gates in the time of its power 

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and glory. A crowd is assembled round a 
portico. All are gazing with delight at the 
entablature, for Phidias is putting up the 
frieze. We turn into another street; a rhap- 
sodist is reciting there ; men, women, children 
are thronging round him; the tears are run- 
ning down their cheeks, their eyes are fixt, 
their very breath is still, for he is telling how 
Priam fell at the feet of Achilles, and kissed 
those hands, the terrible, the murderous, which 
had slain so many of his sons. We enter the 
public place; there is a ring of youths, all 
leaning forward, with sparkling eyes and 
gestures of expectation. Socrates is pitted 
against the famous atheist from Ionia, and 
has just brought him to a contradiction in 
terms. But we are interrupted. The herald 
is crying, "Room for the Prytanes." The 
general assembly is to meet. The people are 
swarming in on every side. Proclamation is 
made: "Who wishes to speak?" There is a 
shout and a clapping of hands; Pericles is 
mounting the stand. Then for a play of 
Sophocles, and away to sup with Aspasia. I 
know of no modern university which has so 
excellent a system of education. 

Knowledge thus acquired and opinions thus 
formed were, indeed, likely to be, in some re- 
spects, defective. Propositions which are ad- 
vanced in discourse generally result from a 
partial view of the question, and can not be 
kept under examination long enough to be 

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corrected. Men of great conversational powers 
almost universally practise a sort of lively 
sophistry and exaggeration, which deceives 
for the moment both themselves and their 
auditors. Thus we see doctrines which can 
not bear a close inspection triumph perpetu- 
ally in drawing-rooms, in debating societies, 
and even in legislative or judicial assemblies. 
To the conversational eucation of the Athe- 
nians I am inclined to attribute the great 
looseness of reasoning which is remarkable in 
most of their scientific writings. Even the 
most illogical of modern writers would stand 
perfectly aghast at the puerile fallacies which 
seem to have deluded some of the greatest 
men of antiquity. Sir Thomas Lethbridge 
would stare at the political economy of Xeno- 
phon; and the author of ''Soirees de Peters- 
bourg" would be ashamed of some of the 
metaphysical arguments of Plato. But the 
very circumstances which retarded the growth 
of science were peculiarly favorable to the 
cultivation of eloquence. From the early hab- 
it of taking a share in animated discussion the 
intelligent student would derive that readi- 
ness of resource, that copiousness of language, 
and that knowledge of the temper and under- 
standing of an audience, which are far more 
valuable to an orator than the greatest logical 
powers. 

Horace has prettily compared poems to 
those paintings of which the effect varies as 

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the spectator changes his stand. The same 
remark applies with at least equal justice to 
speeches. They must be read with the temper 
of those to whom they were addrest, or they 
must necessarily appear to offend against the 
laws of taste and reason, as the finest picture, 
seen in a light different from that for which 
it was designed, will appear fit only for a 
sign. This is perpetually forgotten by those 
who criticize oratory. Because they are read- 
ing at leisure, pausing at every line, recon- 
sidering every argument, they forget that the 
hearers were hurried from point to point too 
rapidly to detect the fallacies through which 
they were conducted; that they had no time 
to disentangle sophisms, or to notice slight in- 
accuracies of expression; that elaborate ex- 
cellence, either of reasoning or of language, 
would have been absolutely thrown away. To 
recur to the analogy of the sister art, these 
connoisseurs examine a panorama through a 
microscope, and quarrel with a scene-painter 
because he does not give to his work the ex- 
quisite finish of Gerard Dow. 

Oratory is to be estimated on principles dif- 
ferent from those which are applied to other 
productions. Truth is the object of philos- 
ophy and history. Truth is the object even of 
those works which are peculiarly called works 
of fiction, but which, in fact, bear the same 
relation to history which algebra bears to 
arithmetic. The merit of poetry, in its wild- 

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est forms, still consists in its truth — truth 
conveyed to the understanding, not directly 
by the words, but circuitously by means of 
imaginative associations, which serve as its 
conductors. The object of oratory alone is 
not truth, but persuasion. The admiration of 
the multitude does not make Moore a greater 
poet than Coleridge, or Beattie a greater phi- 
losopher than Berkeley. But the criterion of 
eloquence is different. A speaker who ex- 
hausts the whole philosophy of a question, 
who displays every grace of style, yet pro- 
duces no effect on his audience, may be a great 
essayist, a great statesman, a great master of 
composition; but he is not an orator. If he 
miss the mark, it makes no difference whether 
he have taken aim too high or too low. 

The effect of the great freedom of the press 
in England has been, in a great measure, to 
destroy this distinction, and to leave among 
us little of what I call oratory proper. Our 
legislators, our candidates on great occasions, 
even our advocates, address themselves less to 
the audience than to the reporters. They think 
less of the few hearers than of the innumer- 
able readers. At Athens the case was differ- 
ent; there the only object of the speaker was 
immediate conviction and persuasion. He, 
therefore, who would justly appreciate the 
merit of the Grecian orators should place him- 
self, as nearly as possible, in the situation of 
their auditors; he should divest himself of 

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his modern feelings and acquirements, and 
make the prejudices and interests of the 
Athenian citizen his own. He who studies 
their works in this spirit will find that many 
of those things which, to an English reader, 
appear to be blemishes — the frequent violation 
of those excellent rules of evidence by which 
our courts of law are regulated, the introduc- 
tion of extraneous matter, the reference to 
considerations of political expediency in judi- 
cial investigations, the assertions without 
proof, the passionate entreaties, the furious 
invectives — are really proofs of the prudence 
and address of the speakers. He must not 
dwell maliciously on arguments or phrases, 
but acquiesce in his first impressions. It re- 
quires repeated perusal and reflection to de- 
cide rightly on any other portion of literature. 
But with respect to works of which the merit 
depends on their instantaneous effect the 
most hasty judgment is likely to be best. 

The history of eloquence at Athens is re- 
markable. From a very early period great 
speakers had flourished there. Pisistratus and 
Themistocles are said to have owed much of 
their influence to their talents for debate. We 
learn with more certainty that Pericles was 
distinguished by extraordinary oratorical 
powers. The substance of some of his speech- 
es is transmitted to us by Thucydides; and 
that excellent writer has doubtless faithfully 
reported the general line of his arguments. 

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PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

But the manner, which in oratory is of at least 
as much consequence as the matter, was of no 
importance to his narration. It is evident that 
he has not attempted to preserve it. Through- 
out his work every speech on every subject, 
whatever may have been the character or the 
dialect of the speaker, is in exactly the same 
form. The grave King of Sparta, the furious 
demagog of Athens, the general encouraging 
his army, the captive supplicating for his 
life, all are represented as speakers in one 
unvaried style, a style moreover wholly unfit 
for oratorical purposes. His mode of reason- 
ing is singularly elliptical, in reality most 
consecutive, yet in appearance often incoher- 
ent. His meaning, in itself sufficiently per- 
plexing, is comprest into the fewest possible 
words. His great fondness for antithetical 
expression has not a little conduced to this 
effect. Every one must have observed how 
much more the sense is condensed in the 
verses of Pope and his imitators, who never 
ventured to continue the same clause from 
couplet to couplet, than in those of poets who 
allow themselves that license. Every arti- 
ficial division which is strongly marked, and 
which frequently recurs, has the same tend- 
ency. The natural and perspicuous expres- 
sion which spontaneously rises to the mind 
will often refuse to accommodate itself to 
such a form. It is necessary either to expand 
it into weakness, or to compress it into almost 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

impenetrable density. The latter is generally 
the choice of an able man, and was assuredly 
the choice of Thucydides. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that such 
speeches could never have been delivered. They 
are perhaps among the most difficult passas^es 
in the Greek language, and would probably 
have been scarcely more intelligible to an 
Athenian auditor than to a modern reader. 
Their obscurity was acknowledged by Cicero, 
who was as intimate with the literature and 
language of Greece as the most accomplished 
of its natives, and who seems to have held a 
respectable rank among the Greek authors. 
Their difficulty to a modern reader lies, not 
in the words, but in the reasoning. A diction- 
ary is of far less use in studying them than a 
clear head and a close attention to the con- 
text. They are valuable to the scholar as dis- 
playing, beyond almost any other composi- 
tions, the powers of the finest of languages; 
they are valuable to the philosopher as illus- 
trating the morals and manners of a most in- 
teresting age; they abound in just thought 
and energetic expression. But they do not 
enable us to form any accurate opinion on the 
merits of the early Greek orators. 

Tho it can not be doubted that before the 
Persian wars Athens had produced eminent 
speakers, yet the period during which elo- 
quence most flourished among her citizens was 
by no means that of her greatest power and 

107 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

glory. It commenced at the close of the Pelo- 
ponnesian War. In fact, the steps by which 
Athenian oratory approached to its finished 
excellence seem to have been almost contempo- 
raneous with those by which the Athenian 
character and the Athenian empire sank to 
degradation. At the time when the little 
commonwealth achieved those victories whicli 
tw^enty-iive eventful centuries have left un- 
equaled, eloquence was in its infancy. The 
deliverers of Greece became its plunderers 
and oppressors. Unmeasured exaction, atro- 
cious vengeance, the madness of the multi- 
tude, the ty^ranny of the great, filled the Cy- 
clades with tears, and blood, and mourning. 
The sword unpeopled whole islands in a day. 
The plow passed over the ruins of famous 
cities. The imperial republic sent forth her 
children by thousands to pine in the quarries 
of Syracuse, or to feed the vultures of ^go- 
spotami. She was at length reduced by famine 
and slaughter to humble herself before her 
enemies, and to purchase existence by the 
sacrifice of her empire and her laws. During 
these disastrous and gloomy years oratory was 
advancing toward its highest excellence. And 
it was when the moral, the political, and the 
military charcter of the people was most ut- 
terly degraded, when the viceroy of a Macedo- 
nian sovereign gave law to Greece, that the 
courts of Athens witnessed the most splendid 
contest of eloquence the world had ever known. 

108 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

The causes of this phenomenon it is not, I 
think, difficult to assign. The division of 
labor operates on the productions of the ora- 
tor as it does on those of the mechanic. It 
was remarked by the ancients that the Pent- 
athelete, who divided his attention between 
several exercises, tho he could not vie with a 
boxer in the use of the cestus, or with one 
who had confined his attention to running in 
the contest of the stadium, yet enjoyed far 
greater general vigor and health than either. 
It is the same with the mind. The superiority 
in technical skill is often more than compen- 
sated by the inferiority in general intelli- 
gence. And this is peculiarly the case in 
politics. States have always been best gov- 
erned by men who have taken a wide view of 
public affairs, and who have rather a general 
acquaintance with many sciences than a per- 
fect mastery of one. The union of the politi- 
cal and military departments in Greece con- 
tributed not a little to the splendor of its early 
history. After their separation more skilful 
generals and greater speakers appeared; but 
the breed of statesmen dwindled and be- 
came almost extinct. Themistocles or Pericles 
would have been no match for Demosthenes in 
the assembly, or for Iphicrates in the field. 
But surely they were incomparably better 
fitted than either for the supreme direction of 
affairs. 

There is, indeed, a remarkable coincidence 

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PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

between the progress of the art of war and 
that of the art of oratory among the Greeks. 
They both advanced to perfection by contem- 
poraneous steps and from similar causes. The 
early speakers, like the early warriors of 
Greece, were merely a militia. It was found 
that in both employments practise and dis- 
cipline gave superiority. Each pursuit there- 
fore became first an art, and then a trade. In 
proportion as the professors of each became 
more expert in their particular craft, they 
became less respectable in their general char- 
acter. Their skill had been obtained at too 
great expense to be employed only from dis- 
interested views. Thus, the soldiers forgot 
that they were citizens, and the orators that 
they were statesmen. I know not to what De- 
mosthenes and his famous contemporaries can 
be so justly compared as to those mercenary 
troops who, in their time, overran Greece ; or 
those who, from similar causes, were some cen- 
turies ago the scourge of the Italian republics, 
perfectly acquainted with every part of their 
profession, irresistible in the field, powerful 
to defend or to destroy, but defending with- 
out love and destroying without hatred. We 
may despise the characters of these political 
condottieri, but it is impossible to examine the 
system of their tactics without being amazed 
at its perfection. 

I had intended to proceed to this examina- 
tion, and to consider separately the remains of 

110 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

Lysias, or ^schines, or Demosthenes, and of 
Isocrates, who, tho strictly speaking he was 
rather a pamphleteer than an orator, deserves, 
on many accounts a place in such a disquisi- 
tion. The length of my prolegomena and di- 
gressions compels me to postpone this part of 
the subject to another occasion. A magazine 
is certainly a delightful invention for a very 
idle or a very busy man. He is not compelled 
to complete his plan or to adhere to his sub- 
ject. He may ramble as far as he is inclined, 
and stop as soon as he is tired. No one takes 
the trouble to recollect his contradictory opin- 
ions or his unredeemed pledges. He may be 
as superficial, as inconsistent, and as careless 
as he chooses. Magazines resemble those little 
angels who, according to the pretty rabbinical 
tradition, are generated every morning by the 
brook which rolls over the flowers of Paradise, 
whose life is a song, who warble till sunset, 
and then sink back without regret into noth- 
ingness. Such spirits have nothing to do with 
the detecting spear of Ithuriel or the victori- 
ous sword of Michael. It is enough for them 
to please and be forgotten. 



Ill 



LITERATURE* 

BY JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN 

IN THE first place I observe that Literature, 
from the derivation of the word, implies 
writing, not speaking. This, however, 
arises from the circumstance of the copious- 
ness, variety, and public circulation of the 
matters of which it consists. What is spoken 
can not outrun the range of the speaker's 
voice, and perishes in the uttering. When 
words are in demand to express a long course 
of thought, when they have to be conveyed to 
the ends of the earth, or perpetuated for the 
benefit of posterity, they must be written 
down — that is, reduced to the shape of litera- 
ture. Still, properly speaking, the terms by 
which we denote this characteristic gift of 
man belong to its exhibition by means of the 
voice, not of handwriting. It addresses itself, 
in its primary idea, to the ear, not to the eye. 
We call it the power of speech, we call it lan- 
guage — that is, the use of the tongue; and, 
even when we write, we still keep in mind 
what was its original instrument, for we use 
freely such terms in our books as "saying," 
"speaking," "telling," "talking," "calling"; 
we use the terms "phraseology" and "dic- 

*From "The Idea of a University," by kind permission of 
the publishers, Longmans, Green & Co., London. 

112 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

tion," as if we were still addressing ourselves 
to the ear. 

Now I insist on this, because it shows that 
speech, and therefore literature, which is its 
permanent record, is essentially a personal 
work. It is not some production or result, at- 
tained by the partnership of several persons, 
or by machinery, or by any natural process, 
but in its very idea it proceeds, and must pro- 
ceed, from some one given individual. Two 
persons can not be the authors of the sounds 
which strike our ear ; and, as they can not be 
speaking one and the same speech, neither can 
they be writing one and the same lecture 
or discourse, which must certainly belong to 
some one person or other, and is the expres- 
sion of that one person's ideas and feelings — 
ideas and feelings personal to himself, tho 
others may have parallel and similar ones, 
proper to himself, in the same sense as his 
voice, his air, his countenance, his carriage, 
and his action are personal. In other words, 
literature expresses not objective truth, as it 
is called, but subjective; not things, but 
thoughts. 

Now this doctrine will become clearer by 
considering another use of words, which does 
relate to objective truth, or to things; which 
relates to matters, not personal, not subjective 
to the individual, but which, even were there 
no individual man in the whole world to know 
them or to talk about them, would exist still. 

113 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

Such objects become the matter of science, 
and words indeed are used to express them; 
but such words are rather symbols than lan- 
guage, and however many we use, and how- 
ever we may perpetuate them by writing, we 
never could make any kind of literature out 
of them, or call them by that name. Such, 
for instance, would be Euclid's Elements; 
they relate to truths universal and eternal; 
they are not mere thoughts, but things : they 
exist in themselves, not by virtue of our un- 
derstanding them, not in dependence upon 
our will, but in what is called the nature of 
things, or at least on conditions external to us. 
The words, then, in which they are set forth 
are not language, speech, literature, but rath- 
er as I have said, symbols. And, as a proof 
if it, you will recollect that it is possible — nay, 
usual — to set forth the propositions of Euclid 
in algebraical notation, which, as all would 
admit, has nothing to do with literature. 
What is true of mathematics is true also of 
every study, so far forth as it is scientific; it 
makes use of words as the mere vehicle of 
things, and is thereby withdrawn from the 
province of literature. Thus, metaphysics, 
ethics, law, political economy, chemistry, the- 
olog}^, cease to be literature in the same de- 
gree as they are capable of a severe scientific 
treatment. And hence it is that Aristotle's 
works on the one hand, tho at first sight litera- 
ture, approach in character — at least a great 

114 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

number of them — to mere science; for even 
tho the things which he treats of and exhibits 
may not always be real and true, yet he treats 
them as if they were, not as if they were the 
thoughts of his own mind; that is, he treats 
them scientifically. On the other hand, law or 
natural history has before now been treated 
by an author with so much of coloring derived 
from his own mind as to become a sort of lit- 
erature. This is especially seen in the in- 
stance of theology when it takes the shape of 
pulpit eloquence. It is seen, too, in historical 
composition, which becomes a mere specimen 
of chronology, or a chronicle, when divested 
of the philosophy, the skill, or the party and 
personal feelings of the particular writer. 
Science, then, has to do with things; litera- 
ture with thoughts; science is universal, lit- 
erature is personal ; science uses words merely 
as symbols, but literature uses language in its 
full compass, as including phraseology, idiom, 
style, composition, rhythm, eloquence, and 
w^hatever other properties are included in it. 

Let us, then, put aside the scientific use of 
words when we are to speak of language and 
literature. Literature is the personal use or 
exercise of language. That this is so is fur- 
ther proved from the fact that one author uses 
it so differently from another. Language it- 
self in its very origination would seem to be 
traceable to individuals. Their peculiarities 
have given it its character. We are often able, 

115 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

in fact, to trace particular phrases or idioms to 
individuals ; we know the history of their rise. 
Slang surely, as it is called, comes of and 
breathes of the personal. The connection be- 
tween the force of words in particular lan- 
guages and the habits and sentiments of the 
nations speaking them has often been pointed 
out. And, while the many use language as 
they find it, the man of genius uses it, indeed, 
but subjects it withal to his own purposes, 
and molds it according to his own peculiar- 
ities. The throng and succession of ideas, 
thoughts, feelings, imaginations, aspirations, 
which pass within him, the abstractions, the 
juxtapositions, the comparisons, the discrimi- 
nations, the conceptions, which are so original 
in him ; his views of external things, his judg- 
ments upon life, manners and history, the ex- 
ercises of his wit, of his humor, of his depth, 
of his sagacity, all these innumerable and 
incessant creations, the very pulsation and 
throbbing of his intellect, does he image forth, 
to all does he give utterance, in a correspond- 
ing language, which is as multiform as this 
inward mental action itself and analogous to 
it, the faithful expression of his intense per- 
sonality, attending on his own inward world 
of thought as its very shadow; so that we 
might as well say that one man's shadow is 
another's as that the style of a really gifted 
mind can belong to any but himself. It fol- 
lows him about as a shadow. His thought 

116 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

and feeling are personal, and so his language 
is personal. 

Thought and speech are inseparable from 
each other. Matter and expression are parts 
of one; style is a thinking out into language. 
This is what I have been laying down, and 
this is literature; not things, not the verbal 
symbols of things; not, on the other hand, 
mere words, but thoughts exprest in language. 
Call to mind, gentlemen, the meaning of the 
Greek word which expresses this special pre- 
rogative of man over the feeble intelligence 
of the inferior animals. It is called logos. 
What does logos mean? It stands both for 
reason and for speech, and it is difficult to 
say which it means more properly. It means 
both at once. Why? Because really they 
can not be divided, because they are in a true 
sense one. When we can separate light and 
illumination, life and motion, the convex and 
the concave of a curve, then it will be possible 
for thought to tread speech under foot and to 
hope to do without it ; then will it be conceiv- 
able that the vigorous and fertile intellect 
should renounce its own double, its instrument 
of expression, and the channel of its specula- 
tions and emotions. 

Critics should consider this view of the 
subject before they lay down such canons of 
taste as the writer whose pages I have quoted. 
Such men as he is consider fine writing to be 
an addition from without to the matter treated 

117 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

of — a sort of ornament superinduced, or a 
luxury indulged in, by those who have time 
and inclination for such vanities. They speak 
as if one man could do the thought and an- 
other the style. We read in Persian travels 
of the way in which young gentlemen go to 
work in the East, when they would engage in 
correspondence with those who inspire them 
with hope or fear. They can not write one 
sentence themselves; so they betake them- 
selves to the professional letter-writer. They 
confide to him the object they have in view. 
They have a point to gain from a superior, 
a favor to ask, an evil to deprecate ; they have 
to approach a man in powder, or to make court 
to some beautiful lady. The professional man 
manufactures words for them as they are want- 
ed, as a stationer sells them paper, or a school- 
master might cut their pens. Thoughts and 
words are, in their conception, two things, 
and thus there is a division of labor. The man 
of thought comes to the man of words; and 
the man of words, duly instructed in the 
thought, dips the pen of desire into the ink 
of devotedness, and proceeds to spread it over 
the page of desolation. Then the nightingale 
of affection is heard to warble to the rose of 
loveliness, while the breeze of- anxiety plays 
around the brow of expectation. This is what 
the Easterns are said to consider fine writing ; 
and it seems pretty much the idea of the 
school of critics to whom I have been referring. 

118 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

We have an instance in literary history of 
this very proceeding nearer home, in a great 
university, in the latter years of the last cen- 
tury. I have referred to it before now in a 
public lecture elsewhere; but it is too much 
in point here to be omitted. A learned Arabic 
scholar had to deliver a set of lectures before 
its doctors and professors on an historical sub- 
ject in which his reading had lain. A linguist 
is conversant with science rather than with 
literature; but this gentleman felt that his 
lectures must not be without a style. Being 
of the opinion of the Orientals, with w^hose 
writings he was familiar, he determined to 
create a style. He took the step of engaging 
a person, at a price, to turn the matter which 
he had got together into ornamental English. 
Observe, he did not wish for mere grammati- 
cal English, but for an elaborate, pretentious 
style. An artist was found in the person of 
a county curate, and the job was carried out. 
His lectures remain to this day in their own 
place in the protracted series of annual dis- 
courses to which they belong, distinguished 
amid a number of heavjdsh compositions by 
the rhetorical and ambitious diction for which 
he went into the market This learned divine, 
indeed, and the author I have quoted, differ 
from each other in the estimate they respect- 
ively form of literary composition; but they 
agree together in this — in considering such 
composition a trick and a trade; they put it 

119 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

on a par with the gold plate and the flowers 
and the music of a banquet, which do not 
make the viands better but the entertainment 
more pleasurable, as if language were the 
hired servant, the mere mistress of the reason, 
and not the lawful wife in her own house. 

But can they really think that Homer, or 
Pindar, or Shakespeare, or Dryden, or Walter 
Scott were accustomed to aim at diction for 
its own sake, instead of being inspired with 
their subject, and pouring forth beautiful 
words because they had beautiful thoughts? 
This is surely too great a paradox to be borne. 
Rather, it is the fire within the author's breast 
which overflows in the torrent of his burning, 
irresistible eloquence; it is the poetry of his 
inner soul, which relieves itself in the ode or 
the elegy; and his mental attitude and bear- 
ing, the beauty of his moral countenance, the 
force and keenness of his logic, are imaged 
in the tenderness, or energy, or richness of 
his language. Nay, according to the well- 
known line, '^Facit indignatio vet^sus''; not 
the words alone, but even the rhythm, the 
metre, the verse, will be the contemporaneous 
oflispring of the emotion or imagination which 
possesses him. ' ' Poeta nascitur, non fit, ' ' says 
the proverb; and this is in numerous in- 
stances true of his poems as well as of him- 
self. They are born, not framed; they are 
a strain rather than a composition ; and their 
perfection is the monument, not so much of his 

120 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

skill as of his power. And this is true of prose 
as well as of verse in its degree. Who will 
not recognize in the vision of Mirza a delicacy 
and beauty of style which is very difficult to 
describe, but which is felt to be in exact cor- 
respondence to the ideas of which it is the 
expression ? 

And, since the thoughts and reasonings of 
an author have, as I have said, a personal 
character, no wonder that his style is not only 
the image of his subject, but of his mind. 
That pomp of language, that full and tuneful 
diction, that felicitousness in the choice and 
exquisiteness in the collocation of words, which 
to prosaic writers seem artificial, is nothing else 
but the mere habit and way of a lofty intel- 
lect. Aristotle, in his sketch of the magnani- 
mous man, tells us that his voice is deep, his 
emotions slow, and his stature commanding. 
In like manner the elocution of a great intel- 
lect is great. His language expresses, not only 
his great thoughts, but his brief self. Cer- 
tainly he might use fewer words than he uses ; 
but he fertilizes his simplest ideas, and germi- 
nates into a multitude of details, and prolongs 
the march of his sentences, and sweeps round 
to the full diapason of his harmony, as if re- 
joicing in his own vigor and richness of re- 
source. I say, a narrow critic will call it 
verbiage, when really it is a sort of fulness of 
heart, parallel to that which makes the merry 
boy whistle as he walks, or the strong man, 

121 



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like the smith in the novel, flourish his club 
when there is no one to fight with. 

Shakespeare furnishes us with frequent 
instances of this peculiarity, and all so beauti- 
ful that it is difficult to select for quotation. 
For instance, in "Macbeth": 

''Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
Eaze out the written troubles of the brain, 
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, 
Cleanse the foul bosom of that perilous stuff, 
Which weighs upon the heart? '^ 

Here a simple idea, by a process which be- 
longs to the orator rather than to the poet, 
but still comes from the native vigor of genius, 
is expanded into a many-membered period. 

The following, from "Hamlet," is of the 
same kind : 

" 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother 
Nor customary suits of solemn black, 
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, 
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, 
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage. 
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief, 
That can denote me truly." 

Now, if such declamation, for declamation 
it is, however noble, be allowable in a poet, 
whose genius is so far removed from pompous- 
ness or pretense, much more is it allowable in 
an orator, whose very province it is to put 
forth words to the best advantage he can. 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

Cicero has nothing more redundant in any 
part of his writings than these passages from 
Shakespeare. No lover then, at least, of 
Shakespeare may fairly accuse Cicero of gor- 
geousness of phraseology or diffuseness of 
style. Nor will any sound critic be tempted 
to do so. As a certain unaffected neatness 
and propriety and grace of diction may be re- 
quired of any author who lays claim to be a 
classic, for the same reason that a certain at- 
tention to dress is expected of every gentle- 
man, so to Cicero may be allowed the privilege 
of the "os magna sonaturum," of which the 
ancient critic speaks. His copious, majestic, 
musical flow of language, even if sometimes 
beyond what the subject-matter demands, is 
never out of keeping with the occasion or with 
the speaker. It is the expression of lofty 
sentiments in lofty sentences, the "mens mag- 
na in corpore magno. " It is the development 
of the inner man. Cicero vividly realized the 
status of a Roman, senator and statesman, 
and the ''pride of place" of Rome, in all the 
grace and grandeur which attached to her; 
and he imbibed, and became what he admired. 
As the exploits of Scipio or Pompey are the 
expression of this greatness in deed, so the 
language of Cicero is the expression of it in 
word. And, as the acts of the Roman ruler 
or soldier represent to us, in a manner special 
to themselves, the characteristic magnanimity 
of the lords of the earth, so do the speeches or 

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PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

treatises of her accomplished orator bring it 
home to our imaginations as no other writing 
could do. Neither Livy, nor Tacitus, nor Ter- 
ence, nor Seneca, nor Pliny, nor Quintilian, 
is an adequate spokesman for the Imperial 
City. They write Latin ; Cicero writes Roman. 
"You will say that Cicero's language is 
undeniably studied, but that Shakespeare's is 
as undeniably natural and spontaneous; and 
that is what is meant when the Classics are 
accused of being mere artists of words. Here 
we are introduced to a further large question, 
which gives me the opportunity of anticipa- 
ting a misapprehension of my meaning. I ob- 
serve, then, that not only is that lavish rich- 
ness of style which I have noticed in Shake- 
speare justifiable on the principles which I 
have been laying down, but, what is less easy 
to receive, even elaborateness in composition 
is no mark of trick or artifice in an author. 
Undoubtedly, the works of the classics, particu- 
larly the Latin, are elaborate ; they have cost 
a great deal of time, care and trouble. They 
have had many rough copies, I grant it. I 
gTant also that there are writers of name, an- 
cient and modern, who really are guilty of the 
absurdity of making sentences, as the very 
end of their literary labor. Such was Isocra- 
tes; such were some of the sophists. They 
were set on words, to the neglect of thoughts 
or things ; I can not defend them. If I must 
give an English instance of this fault, much 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

as I love and revere the personal character 
and intellectual vigor of Doctor Johnson, I 
can not deny that his style often outruns the 
sense and the occasion, and is wanting in that 
simplicity which is the attribute of genius. 
Still, granting all this, I can not grant, not- 
withstanding, that genius never need take 
pains, that genius may not improve by prac- 
tise, that it never incurs failures, and succeeds 
the second time, that it never finishes off at 
leisure what it has thrown off in the outline 
at a stroke. 

Take the instance of the painter or the 
sculptor; he has a conception in his mind 
which he wishes to represent in the medium 
of his art — the Madonna and the Child, or 
Innocence, or Fortitude, or some historical 
character or event. Do you mean to say he 
does not study his subject ? Does he not make 
sketches? Does he not even call them "stud- 
ies?" Does he not call his workroom a studio ? 
Is he not ever designing, rejecting, adopting, 
correcting, perfecting? Are not the first 
attempts of Michelangelo and Raffael ex- 
tant in the case of some of their most cele- 
brated compositions? Will any one say that 
Apollo Belvidere is not a conception patiently 
elaborated into its proper perfection? These 
departments of taste are, according to the re- 
ceived notions of the world, the very province 
of genius, and yet we call them arts; they are 
the ' ' Fine Arts. ' ' Why may not that be true 

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of literary composition which is true of paint- 
ing, sculpture, architecture and music ? Why 
may not language be wrought as well as the 
clay of the modeler? Why may not words be 
worked up as well as colors? Why should 
not skill in diction be simply subservient and 
instrumental to the great prototypal ideas 
which are the contemplation of a Plato or a 
Vergil ? Our greatest poet tells us, 

**The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolUng, 
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to 

heaven, 
And, as imagination bodies forth 
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 
A local habitation and a name. ' ' 

Now, is it Avonderful that that pen of his 
should sometimes be at fault for a while — 
that it should pause, write, erase, rewrite, 
amend, complete, before he satisfies himself 
that his language has done justice to the con- 
ceptions which his mind's eye contemplated? 

In this point of view, doubtless, many or 
most writers are elaborate ; and those certain- 
ly not the least whose style is furthest re- 
moved from ornament, being simple and natu- 
ral, or vehement, or severely business-like and 
practical. Who so energetic and manly as 
Demosthenes? Yet he is said to have tran- 
scribed Thucydides many times over in the 
formation of his style. Who so gracefully 
natural as Herodotus? Yet his very dialect 

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is not his own, but chosen for the sake of per- 
fection of his narrative. Who exhibits such 
happy negligence as our own Addison? Yet 
artistic fastidiousness was so notorious in his 
instance that the report has got abroad, truly 
or not, that he was too late in his issue of an 
important state paper from his habit of revi- 
sion and recomposition. Such great authors 
were working by a model which was before 
the eyes of their intellect, and they were labor- 
ing to say what they had to say in such a way 
as would most exactly and suitably express it. 
It is not wonderful that other authors, whose 
style is not simple, should be instances of a 
similar literary diligence. Vergil wished his 
^neidto be burned, elaborate as is its composi- 
tion, because he felt it needed more labor still, 
in order to make it perfect. The historian 
Gibbon, in the last century, is another in- 
stance in point. You must not suppose I am 
going to recommend his style for imitation, 
any more than his principles; but I refer to 
him as the example of a writer feeling the task 
which lay before him, feeling that he had to 
bring out into w^ords for the comprehension 
of his readers a great and complicated scene, 
and wishing that those words should be ade- 
quate to his undertaking. I think he wrote 
the first chapter of his History three times 
over. It was not that he corrected or improved 
the first copy; but he put his first essay, and 
then his second, aside; he recast his matter, 

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till he had hit the precise exhibition of it 
which he thought demanded by his subject. 

Now in all these instances I wish you to 
observe that what I have admitted about lit- 
erary workmanship differs from the doctrine 
which I am opposing in this — that the mere 
dealer in words cares little or nothing for the 
subject which he is embellishing, but can paint 
and gild anything whatever to order ; where- 
as the artist, whom I am acknowledging, has 
his great or rich visions before him, and his 
only aim is to bring out what he thinks or 
what he feels in a way adequate to the thing 
spoken of, and appropriate to the speaker. 

The illustration w^hich I have been borrow- 
ing from the Fine Arts will enable me to go 
a step further. I have been showing the con- 
nection of the thought with the language in 
literary composition, and in doing so I have 
exposed the unphilosophical notion that the 
language was an extra which could be dis- 
pensed with, and provided to order according 
to the demand. But I have not yet brought 
out what immediately follows from this, and 
which was the second point which I had to 
show, viz., that to be capable of easy transla- 
tion is no test of the excellence of a composi- 
tion. If I must say what I think, I should 
lay down, with little hesitation, that the truth 
was almost the reverse of this doctrine. Nor 
are many words required to show it. Such a 
doctrine, as is contained in the passage of the 

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author whom I quoted when I began, goes 
upon the assumption that one language is just 
like another language; that every language 
has all the ideas, turns of thought, delicacies 
of expression, figures, associations, abstrac- 
tions, points of view, which every other lan- 
guage has. Now, as far as regards Science, 
it is true that all languages are pretty much 
alike for the purposes of Science; but even 
in this respect some are more suitable than 
others, which have to coin words, or to bor- 
row them, in order to express scientific ideas. 
But if languages are not all equally adapted 
even to furnish symbols for those universal 
and eternal truths in which Science consists, 
how can they reasonably be expected to be all 
equally rich, equally forcible, equally musical, 
equally exact, equally happy in expressing the 
idiosyncratic peculiarities of thought of some 
original and fertile mind, who has availed 
himself of one of them ? A great author takes 
his native language, masters it, partly throws 
himself into it, partly molds and adapts it, 
and pours out his multitude of ideas through 
the variously ramified and delicately minute 
channels of expression which he has found or 
framed. Does it follow that this, his personal 
presence (as it may be called), can forthwith 
be transferred to every other language under 
the sun? Then may we reasonably maintain 
that Beethoven's piano music is not really 
beautiful because it can not be played on the 

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hurdy-gurdy. Were not this astonishing doc- 
trine maintained by persons far superior to 
the writer whom I have selected for animad- 
version, I should find it difficult to be patient 
under a gratuitous extravagance. It seems 
that a really great author must admit of 
translation, and that we have a test of his ex- 
cellence when he reads to advantage in a for- 
eign language as well as in his own. Then 
Shakespeare is a genius because he can be 
translated into German, and not a genius be- 
cause he can not be translated into French. 
Then the multiplication table is the most gift- 
ed of all conceivable composition, because it 
loses nothing by translation, and can hardly 
be said to belong to any one language what- 
ever. Whereas I should rather have conceived 
that, in- proportion as ideas are novel or re- 
condite, they would be difficult to put into 
words, and that they very fact of their having 
insinuated themselves into one language would 
diminish the chance of that happy incident 
being repeated in another. In the language of 
savages you can hardly express any idea or 
act of the intellect at all. Is the tongue of the 
Hottentot or Eskimo to be made the meas- 
ure of the genius of Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, 
St. Jerome, Dante, or Cervantes? 

Let us recur, I say, to the illustration of the 
Fine Arts. I suppose you can express ideas 
in painting which you can not express in 
sculpture; and the more an artist is of a 

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painter, the less he is likeh' to be of a sculptor. 
The more he commits his genius to the meth- 
ods and conditions of his own art, the less he 
will be able to throw himself into the circum- 
stances of another. Is the genius of Fra An- 
gelico, of Francia, or of Raffael disparaged 
by the fact that he was able to do that in 
colors which no man that ever lived, which no 
angel, could achieve in wood? Each of the 
fine arts has its own subject-matter. From 
the nature of the case you can do in one what 
you can not do in another; you can do in 
painting what you can not do in carving; you 
can do in oils what you can not do in fresco ; 
you can do in marble what you can not do in 
ivory ; you can do in wax what you can not do 
in bronze. Then, I repeat, applying this to 
the case of languages, why should not genius 
be able to do in Greek what it can not do in 
Latin? And why are its Greek and Latin 
works defective because they will not turn 
into English? That genius, of which we are 
speaking, did not make English; it did not 
make all languages, present, past and future; 
it did not make the laws of any language. 
Why is it to be judged of by that in which it 
had no part, over which it has no control ? 

And now we are naturally brought on to our 
third point, which is on the characteristics of 
Holy Scripture as compared w^ith profane lit- 
erature. Hitherto we have been concerned 
with the doctrine of these writers, viz., that 

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style is an extra, that it is a mere artifice, and 
that hence it can not be translated. Now we 
come to their fact, viz., that Scripture has no 
such artificial style, and that Scripture can 
easily be translated. Surely their fact is a^ 
untenable as their doctrine. 

Scripture easy of translation! Then why 
have there been so few good translators ? Why 
is it that there has been such great difficulty 
in combining the two necessary qualities, fidel- 
ity to the original and purity in the adopted 
vernacular? Why is it that the authorized 
versions of the Church are often so inferior 
to the original as compositions, except that 
the Church is bound, above all things, to see 
that the version is doctrinally correct, and in 
a difficult problem is obliged to put up with 
defects in what is of secondary importance, 
provided she secure what is of first? If it 
were so easy to transfer the beauty of the 
original to the copy, she would not have been 
content with her received version in various 
languages which could be named. 

And then, in the next place, Scripture not 
elaborate! Scripture not ornamented in dic- 
tion and musical in cadence! Why, consider 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. Where is there in 
the classics any composition more carefully, 
more artificially written? Consider the Book 
of Job : Is it not a sacred drama, as artistic, 
as perfect, as any Greek tragedy of Sophocles 
or Euripides? Consider the Psalter: Are 

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there no ornaments, no rhythm, no studied 
cadences, no responsive members, in that di- 
vinely beautiful book? And is it not hard 
to understand? Is not Saint Paul hard to 
understand ? Who can say that these are pop- 
ular compositions ? Who can say that they are 
level at first reading with the understandings 
of the multitude ? 

That there are portions indeed of the in- 
spired volume more simple both in style and 
in meaning, and that these are the more sacred 
and sublime passages, as, for instance, parts 
of the Gospels, I grant at once ; but this does 
not militate against the doctrine I have been 
laying down. Recollect, gentlemen, my dis- 
tinction when I began. I have said literature 
is one thing, and that science is another; that 
literature has to do with ideas, and science 
with realities ; that literature is of a personal 
character, that science treats of what is uni- 
versal and eternal. In proportion, then, as 
Scripture excludes the personal coloring of 
its writers, and rises into the region of pure 
and mere inspiration, when it ceases in any 
sense to be the writing of man, Saint Paul or 
Saint John, of Moses or Isaiah, then it comes 
to belong to science, not literature. Then it 
conveys the things of heaven, unseen verities, 
divine manifestations, and them alone — not 
the ideas, the feelings, the aspirations, of its 
human instruments, who, for all that they 
were inspired and infallible, did not cease to 

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be men. Saint Paul's epistles, then, I con- 
sider to be literature in a real and true sense, 
as personal, as rich in reflection and emotion, 
as Demosthenes or Euripides; and, without 
ceasing to be revelations of objective truth, 
they are expressions of the subjective, not- 
withstanding. On the other hand, portions of 
the Gospels, of the book of Genesis, and other 
passages of the Sacred Volume, are of the 
nature of science. Such is the beginning of 
Saint John's Gospel, which we read at the end 
of Mass. Such is the Creed. I mean, pas- 
sages such as these are the mere enunciation of 
eternal things, without (so to say) the medi- 
um of any human mind transmitting them to 
us. The w^ords used have the grandeur, the 
majesty, the calm, unimpassioned beauty of 
science; they are in no sense literature, they 
are in no sense personal ; and therefore they 
are easy to apprehend, and easy to translate. 

Did time admit I could show you parallel 
instances of what I am speaking of in the 
classics inferior to the inspired word in pro- 
portion as the subject-matter of the classical 
authors is immensely inferior to the subjects 
treated of in Scripture, but parallel, inasmuch 
as the classical author or speaker ceases for 
the moment to have to do with literature, as 
speaking of things objectively, and rises to 
the serene sublimity of science. But I should 
be carried too far if I began. 

I shall then merely sum up what I have said, 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

and come to a conclusion. Reverting, then, 
to my original question, what is the meaning 
of letters, as contained, gentlemen, in the des- 
ignation of your faculty, I have answered, 
that by letters or literature is meant the 
expression of thought in language, where by 
''thought" I mean the ideas, feelings, views, 
reasonings, and other operations of the human 
mind. And the art of letters is the method 
by which a speaker or writer brings out in 
words, worthy of his subject, and sufficient 
for his audience or readers, the thoughts which 
impress him. Literature, then, is of a personal 
character; it consists in the enunciations and 
teachings of those who have a right to speak 
as representatives of their kind, and in those 
words their brethren find an interpretation 
of their own sentiments, a record of their own 
experience, and a suggestion for their own 
judgments. A great author, gentlemen, is not 
one who merely has a copia verhorum, whether 
in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on 
at his will any number of splendid phrases 
and swelling sentences ; but he is one who has 
something to say and knows how to say it. 
I do not claim for him, as such, any great 
depth of thought, or breadth of view, or phi- 
losophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human 
nature, or experience of human life, tho these 
additional gifts he may have, and the more he 
has of them the greater he is ; but I ascribe to 
him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense 

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the faculty of expression. He is master of the 
twofold Logos, the thought and the word, dis- 
tinct, but inseparable from each other. He 
may, if so be, elaborate his compositions, or 
he may pour out his improvisations, but in 
either case he has but one aim, which he keeps 
steadily before him, and is conscientious and 
single-minded in fulfilling. That aim is to 
give forth what he has within him ; and from 
his very earnestness it comes to pass that, 
whatever be the splendor of his diction or the 
harmony of his periods, he has with him the 
charm of an incommunicable simplicity. What- 
ever be his subject, high or low, he treats it 
suitably and for its own sake. If he is a poet, 
''nil molitur inepte." If he is an orator, 
then, too, he speaks, not only ''distincte" and 
''splendide," but also '^apte." His page is 
the lucid mirror of his mind and lif( 



"Quo fit, ut omnis 
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella 
Vita senis. " 

He writes passionately, because he feels 
keenly ; forcibly, because he conceives vividly. 
He sees too clearly to be vague ; he is too seri- 
ous to be otiose; he can analyze his subject, 
and therefore he is rich ; he embraces it as a 
whole and in its parts, and therefore he is 
consistent ; he has a firm hold of it, and there- 
fore he is luminous. When his imagination 
w^ells up, it overflows in ornament; when his 

136 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. He 
always has the right word for the right idea, 
and never a word too much. If he is brief, 
it is because few words suffice ; when he is 
lavish of them, still each word has its mark, 
and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march 
of his elocution. He expresses what all feel, 
but all can not say ; and his sayings pass into 
proverbs among his people, and his phrases 
become household words and idioms of their 
daily speech, which is tessellated with the rich 
fragments of his language, as we see in foreign 
lands the marbles of Roman grandeur worked 
into the walls and pavements of modern pal- 
aces. 

Such preeminently is Shakespeare among 
ourselves; such preeminently Vergil among 
the Latins; such in their degree are all those 
WTiters who in every nation go by the name of 
Classics. To particular nations they are nec- 
essarily attached from the circumstances of 
the variety of tongues and the peculiarities of 
each; but so far they have a catholic and 
ecumenical character, that what they express 
is common to the whole race of man, and they 
alone are able to express it. 

If then the power of speech is a gift as 
great as any that can be named, if the origin 
of language is by many philosophers even 
considered to be nothing short of divine, if 
by means of words the secrets of the heart are 
brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hid- 

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den grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, 
counsel imparted, experience recorded and 
wisdom perpetuated; if by great authors the 
many are drawn up into unity, national char- 
acter is fixt, a people speaks, the past and the 
future, the east and the west are brought into 
communication with each other; if such men 
are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of 
the human family, it will not answer to make 
light of literature or to neglect its study; 
rather we may be sure that, in proportion as 
we master it in whatever language, and imbibe 
its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our 
own measure the ministers of like benefits to 
others, be they many or few, be they in the 
obscurer or the more distinguished walks of 
life, who are united to us by social ties, and 
are within the sphere of our personal influ- 
ence. 



138 



SPEECH AND THOUGHT 

BY RUDOLF HERMANN LOTZE 
(From ''Microcosmus")* 

IN WHATEVER may consist that state of ex- 
citation into which the nerves of sense 
are brought by external stimuli, it at 
any rate presents a definite amount of some 
physical motion of masses that by the law of 
persistence can not cease of itself, but must 
either be stopt by some definite resistance 
or reduced to zero by distribution over the 
environment. If the organs of sense are de- 
signed to be to us a medium of knowledge of 
the outer world, it is necessary, in order to 
our receiving this unadulterated, that the 
tremor produced by the impression of one 
moment should rapidly be so far mitigated as 
not to counteract the impression of the next 
moment or blend with it as an adulterative 
element. So long as the physical stimuli by 
which the senses are acted on are but incon- 
siderable amounts of motion, this perpetual 
effacement of their effects may be accom- 
plished partly within the organ of sense 
through the uninterrupted processes of the 
transformation of matter, partly through the 

♦From "Microoosmus," by kind permission of the publishers, 
T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh. 

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PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

generation of the sensation itself. For even 
sensation, as a newly manifested internal phe- 
nomenon of the soul, which as a substance 
stands in a mechanical relation of reciprocal 
action with the elements of the body, can not 
merely arise on occasion of nerve-stimulation ; 
part of the latter must be utilized in its pro- 
duction. The stimuli of light and sound 
constantly acting on us keep within these 
limits of intensity, and we are not aware of 
any special corrective agency by which their 
influence require to be adjusted. If, on the 
other hand, external impressions reach a pain- 
ful degree of strength, we must expect to find 
a corresponding provision of means for their 
removal. Now, as it is the office of the nerve- 
filaments to transmit to the brain the stimu- 
lations received at their extremities, it is not 
to be supposed that this provision can consist 
in any sudden hindrance to transmission, or 
in any considerably increased distribution of 
the stimulation in all directions. Both are un- 
favorable to the natural function of the sen- 
sory nerve, and we may look on it as uni- 
versally characteristic of the organization that 
it meets threatening disturbances not with 
new and unusual means, but with means of 
a type that has already appeared in the 
healthy condition. So long, then, as the in- 
tensity of the stimulus does not directly injure 
the nerve, and thereby, of course, preclude 
the further effects of a too violent impression, 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

we assume that the excitation is transmitted 
to the central organs and dissipated by there 
producing a larger proportion of after-affects, 
the fainter traces of which may be discerned 
even in the ordinary degrees of stimulation. 
Three roads are open for the further ex- 
tension of the stimulation in the brain; for 
the sensory nerve finds there: (1) other sens- 
ory nerves; (2) sympathetic nerves; (3) 
motor nerves. The transference of its excita- 
tion to other sensory nerves, consequently the 
production of an accompanying sensation in 
other than the actually stimulated parts, must 
be confined with a narrow range if the pur- 
pose of sentience, to bring about somehow a 
knowledge of the outer world, is not to be too 
much restricted. As a matter of fact, the 
strongest stimulation of one organ of sense 
does not produce any distinct stimulation of 
another; excess of light produces no sensa- 
tion of sound; a loud sound no sensation of 
smell. Only the general sense shares in the 
disturbance through the change effected in its 
states. A transference of the stimulation to 
the vegetative filaments of the sympathetic 
system would be more advantageous, because 
among the manifold functions of these nerves 
there are many that without any detrimental 
effect on life can be for the moment increased 
in amount, and by which, as well as by many 
alterations in the process of material trans- 
formation due to them, the disturbance of 

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the organism can be harmlessly carried off. 
The phenomena of fever offer an example of 
transference of excitation in this direction. 
But in the natural course of life the sensa- 
tions are specially designed to serve as incite- 
ments to movements by which the soul some- 
how subjects perceived objects to its elabora- 
ting processes. So many reasons render nec- 
essary the close connection of sensory with 
motor nerves and the excitation of movements 
by the direct action of the former, that we 
can not wonder if even painful disturbances 
are for the most part counteracted in this 
way — always kept open for the purposes of 
healthy life — viz., by a communication to m.o- 
tor nerves, consequently by means of the pro- 
duction of motion. 

Hence it is that we find all violent pains 
in the living body, powerful irritants even in 
decapitated animals, call forth movements at 
first in the immediately aft'ected parts, as the 
impression becomes stronger throughout the 
whole body. Sometimes there comes to be a 
changeful succession of these, a tremulous 
agitation of the whole body — sometimes, where 
a strong effort at patient endurance is made, 
a rigid, persistent, exceedingly violent contrac- 
tion of a single group of muscles is brought 
about, in order that in the surplus energy here 
expended the internal stimulation may, have 
an outlet. So the sufferer grinds his teeth or 
clenches fists, or straightens his back and 

142 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

stretches out his aimlessly stiffened leg. At 
last the persistent or increasing irritation 
withdraws these movements from the influence 
of the will and exhausts itself in incessant 
spasmodic attacks. Mental agitations from 
within act upon the nerves in the same fash- 
ion as the sense-impressions coming froni 
without do here. In view of the reciprocal 
action between body and soul, we can not look 
upon these two processes as running their 
course exclusively within the latter and re- 
quiring special causes to make them assume 
a corporeal form; from the first they are a 
certain quantum of effective motion, whose 
impression on the body, instead of needing to 
be brought to bear by special means, must by 
special means be prevented. 

It is unnecessary to describe at greater 
length the general state of disturbance and 
the half-convulsive attitudes into which the 
body is thrown by the pressure of mental 
emotions. One group of special importance 
must, however, be singled out from the mul- 
titude. Where the mental agitation contains 
likewise a motive to a particular action, ges- 
tures make their appearance which either 
copy that action in miniature or exhibit it in 
its first stage — e.g., the gestures of anger 
when its object is in sight, or at least known. 
On the other hand, where the mind is help- 
lessly tossed to and fro in a sea of pain or 
pleasure, the internal agitation finds vent 

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chiefly in the most various changes of the 
breathing, or rather limits itself to this mode 
of expression, which is never wholly absent in 
the already-mentioned contortions. In joy, in 
grief, in surprize, respiration becomes un- 
equal, accelerated, and deep, or rapid and 
short, or remittent, irregular, more like a 
sigh ; with emotion is associated the tremulous 
movement that takes the place of the quiet, 
uniform activity of the respiratory muscles 
and precedes an outburst of sobbing; anger 
and rage for a moment keeps back the deep- 
draT\Ti breath, that, after the fashion of all 
assailants, it may meet its object with firm- 
braced chest; the fury that has no object on 
which to expend itself begins to snort, inten- 
tionally executing and exaggerating respira- 
tory movements that at other times go on in- 
stinctively and imperceptibly; finally, in 
laughter, delight in a harmlessly absurd in- 
congruity breaks out in spasmodic working of 
the muscles of respiration. All these convuls- 
ive movements have the conspicuous peculiar- 
ity that nothing is effected by means of them ; 
with air for their material and no aim at any 
product whatever any more than a direction 
toward any definite end, they are the purest 
expression of mere excitement, pleasurable 
or painful. Even as such they would afford 
the onlooker a vivid and faithful picture of 
the internal state; but Nature has attached 
the vibrating bands of the vocal ligaments to 

144 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

the system of the respiratory organs, and thus 
gives an opportunity to the faintest ingredi- 
ents of this aimless disturbance to embody 
themselves in the audible tones of the voice, 
and to make themselves heard at a distance 
in the outer world. So in the animal kingdom 
we have the sound of pain and the sound of 
joy — infinitely poorer in definite indication of 
objects and actions than the rudest gesture, in 
expression of the hidden emotion itself in- 
comparably richer than any other means 
which living races could have chosen for mu- 
tual communication. For as a photographic 
likeness is the exact reproduction of the form, 
so is the voice in its pitch, its peculiar timber, 
and the degree of steadiness, strain and loud- 
ness the direct audible likeness of the in- 
numerable minute and finely knitted impres- 
sions produced by the emotion of the mind 
on the mobile masses of the body. 

The view has been held that speech was an 
invention, in such a sense that out of several 
means of communication men deliberately 
chose this; but there certainly is no fear of 
its being revived in these days, and the fore- 
going remarks show how, on the contrary, by 
a naturally predetermined physiological ne- 
cessity, the soul is compelled to express in 
tones at least the general character of its 
inner states. But we are still a long way dis- 
tant from human language, and modern theo- 
rists who content themselves with admiring 

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the organic unity and connection of the 
thought-forming fantasy and the sound- 
forming voice, overlook a great number of 
intermediate links, some of which it is quite 
requisite to mention. 

Nature has bestowed voice on many races of 
animals ; many develop it into song, none into 
speech. The question arises, what is the cause 
of this? Is it that the animals are without 
any matter which they have the desire to 
express, or that they are prevented from doing 
so by some phj^sical obstacle? However the 
case may stand with the content of animal 
consciousness, I can not be one of those who 
answer the latter question in the negative, 
for I am convinced that defects of organiza- 
tion would in any case prevent the develop- 
ment of the animal voice into speech, and 
that, on the other hand, man's superiority 
rests partly on the better organization pecu- 
liar to him. The anatomical investigation of 
the vocal organs which formerly led Rudolphi 
to make the assertion that the absence of 
speech in apes was at all events not deter- 
mined by any deficiency in their organs, can 
at most prove that all the conditions of vocal- 
ization are present; and the most ordinary 
experience makes it needless to prove this. 
But speech develops itself out of voice through 
the articulation of sounds ; and in the animal 
kingdom we find this either not at .all or only 
in the most fragmentary form. 

146 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

Taking as a basis of comparison the human 
system of vowel and consonant sounds, we 
may note as a remarkable fact, that while 
some birds can imitate our words, even this 
mechanical capability has never been observed 
in any mammal. And yet the formation oJ^ 
the cavity of the mouth, the teeth, the tongue, 
the palate, in this class of animals far more 
resembles the human than that of any bird. 
It may further be added that among the 
mammalia different particular consonants and 
vowels are actually to be met with divided 
among different species, tho in the same spe- 
cies they are never united into a compound 
speech sound. The dog says r and guttural 
ch very distinctly ; the cat is acquainted with 
/; cows and sheep with nasal n, and we can 
hardly doubt that most of the fixt positions 
of the mouth on which our articulate sounds 
depend, would be mechanically possible to ani- 
mals if only there were for their muscles an 
impulse to produce them, and for their fan- 
tasy an impulse to combine them together. 
But even the ape, with its propensity to mim- 
icry, remains dumb; the dog, attentive as he 
is to the purport of our words, makes not the 
slightest attempt at speech ; only birds repeat 
sounds made in their hearing, but by nature 
they, too, keep to the inarticulate tones and 
melodies of their kind. Now wherein lies the 
obstacle ? In my opinion, in these two things : 
First, defective sense of hearing ; and second, 

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want of an organically constituted harmony 
between ideas of sound and the muscular 
movements that are requisite for the produc- 
tion of sounds. 

Even the highest achievement of animals 
in the direction of voice-development, the song 
of birds, is remarkable for a total want of har- 
monious tone relations. The melody advances 
in the most irregular fashion ; sometimes lin- 
gering on one note with all possible purity 
and with bewitching quality of voice; some- 
times running through a series of sounds, in 
each of which an indefinite number of rapid 
transitions from one pitch to another are com- 
bined into a kind of chaotic noise ; sometimes, 
finally, continuing through quarter tones or 
quite inharmonious intervals. There is no 
reason to suppose that the sequence of two 
pure tones forming a concord is impossible 
for birds, for they do occasionally make it; 
there is rather, evidently, an absence of any 
sensuous motive for preferring this sequence 
to any other. I am therefore of opinion 
that birds' ear and fantasy lack susceptibility 
for harmonic intervals, and that the scale 
seems to them only more or less in the mat- 
ter of pitch, while the qualitative relations 
through which to us two tones at a wider in- 
terval in the scale may be more nearly related 
than two close together, are lost upon them. 
This defect would not be a decisive obstacle 
to speech but for its association with another 

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which we also meet with in the voices of all 
animals. All are aware of the difficulty there 
is in expressing their sounds by a written 
notation, altho in the growling or snarl of 
dogs, when we think of it as divided into in- 
finitesimal intervals of time, we have almost 
every one of these intervals filled with a par- 
ticular vowel or consonant, yet the animals 
hardly ever keep their mouth for a measur- 
able time in one position, and every definite 
sound has no sooner been uttered than it 
passes into another. While, then, the voices 
of dogs or oxen sound to a great distance, they 
never emit one unequivocal vowel, but from 
moment to moment hover between one and 
another. Here, too, I can not think that there 
is any muscular incapability to prevent the 
retention of the pure sound; rather I believe 
that to the ear of animals the distinctions of 
articulate speech-sounds, tho not incapable of 
being perceived, have no such emphatic es- 
thetic value as to lead to any importance being 
attached to them. In this connection I must 
introduce a general remark in regard to the 
sound-material of speech, which forms a 
continuation of the reflections already made 
on the peculiar character of human sen- 
tience. 

Were we to try to put into character all 
the vowel sounds that have been emitted by 
individuals or by nations, we should require 
a countless multitude of signs; but it is at 

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once apparent to our natural feeling that this 
multitude of different sounds have not all a 
uniform value. On the contrary, there stands 
out from among them a very small group as 
pure primitive vowels, distinguished not only 
by being recognized as simple elements in our 
now fixt written language, but by having in 
themselves an obviously distinct character and 
a special value. Between these fixt points, 
a, e, i, 0, u, we insert all other vowel sounds 
as deviations, approximations, obscurations, 
and mixtures, just as we reduce the endless 
variety of tints to a small group of simple 
primary colors. Thus to our ear the innu- 
merable vowel sounds are by no means a 
vague, confused host, that we might increase 
by the addition of new vowels at any moment 
when we either gave ourselves trouble to put 
our mouth into an unusual attitude, or chose 
to suppose that our vocal organs were differ- 
ently constituted. The group is a closed one 
in spite of the endless number it contains, for 
there are fixt points between which all other 
conceivable modifications must take their 
place. The vowels then stand before our 
imagination as a system, a regular series of 
intrinsic value, so that our voice in pronounc- 
ing them does not emit arbitrary sounds, but 
subjects itself to the inherent necessity and 
regularity of a scale which would be such even 
if no one had ever embodied its parts in 
speech. In spite of the obscurity still hang- 

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ing over the physical conditions under which 
the several vowels arise, the supposition is 
probable that in the five simple ones the mani- 
fold reverberation of the sound-waves of the 
voice within the cavity of the mouth produce 
a particularly simple, regular, and symmetri- 
cal development and intersection of rarefac- 
tion and condensation, so that the total move- 
ment of the particles of air, could it be made 
visible, would form for each of these vowels 
a figure whose formula could easily be stated. 
Hence it may arise that these sounds alone 
appear to us pure, genuine, normal, and sim- 
ple, and that our ears seek to derive all others 
from them as compound or mixed. Now this 
susceptibility for such an objective truth in 
sounds is what I would assign to the human 
sense of hearing in contrast to the animal; 
and the more delicate this power of discrimi- 
nation the more will sentience strive to re- 
produce these sounds, through the voice as 
their productive organ, and to reduce ancl 
articulate the chaotic sum of possible sounds 
into these sharply separated elements. 

It would be more difficult to prove the same 
in regard to the consonants; but a glance at 
their application in languages shows with 
what delicacy their mutual affinity is felt, and 
I think that one would perceive this affinity 
immediately from their sound, even were one 
not clear as to the analogy between their 
modes of origination. Palatals are by every 
one, apart from any theory, discriminated 

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from others as a connected group of sounds 
passing into one another. Now, I do not be- 
lieve that any speech could be formed for the 
expression of thought were all this otherwise ; 
did not the whole material of sound stand be- 
fore us as an objective system of tones, each 
several member sharply discriminated from 
the others and yet allied with many by natu- 
ral affinities, each one pure and distinct, yet 
capable of grouping around itself a multitude 
of proximate modifications. From this point 
of view it is intelligible that human speech 
has not adopted a considerable number of 
sounds which we can unquestionably make, 
but which are too indistinct in their relation^ 
of affinity with others to be utilizable mate- 
rial ; it is further not probable that speech in 
the earliest stage of its growth was content 
with the three vowels, a, i, u, as the most 
sharply discriminated and those which alone 
are perfectly pure, and that not till later did 
it recognizes e and o, which, without deliberate 
attention, are never sustained pure, but pass 
into i and %l I do not mean that only those 
three have from the first actually been ut- 
tered ; on the contrary, that strange phenom- 
enon in speech-consciousness, of sounds and 
words being different in name from what 
they are as spoken, may have showed itself at 
an early period — curious conflict that it is 
between the conception of the sound as it by 
rights must be and the facility of uttering it. 
It seems to me natural, however, that in it« 

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first exercise this working fantasy should 
most readily exhibit its arbitrary legislation, 
or recognition of law, in the harshest and 
sharpest contrasts; a phonic system so weak- 
ened and moving by preference among such 
minute distinctions as, for instance, the Eng- 
lish language, at present can belong only to 
a time that puts together breccias and con- 
glomerates out of earlier original formations. 
My original intention, therefore, was to 
show that by the human sense of hearing are 
discriminated distinctions in sounds which to 
that of animals are not indeed as zero, yet are 
not perceived in the full significance of their 
mutual relations. This by itself would ex- 
plain the absence of spontaneous production 
of these sounds; but I added above the con- 
jecture that, besides, the difficulty of produc- 
ing them is increased by imperfection in the 
mechanics by which the voice is moved. The 
process by which all voluntary movements are 
executed is, as we have already shown, con- 
cealed from consciousness; the image of the 
new position to be effected, and the remem- 
brance of the peculiar modifications of our 
general sense by which on former occasions its 
execution was accompanied, are the sole two 
points appearing in consciousness, to which 
the carrying out of the movement itself is 
subsequently attached by means of an uncon- 
scious and automatically working mechanism. 
In the case of speech, the auricular image of 

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the sound to be produced takes the place of 
the ocular image of the movement to be per- 
formed. To the actual utterance of the sound 
it is now indispensable that along with this 
auricular image — which we must conceive 
both as a mere internal psychic state, but also 
as a slight stimulation of the auditory nerve 
thence proceeding — be associated by an or- 
ganic arrangement the impulse to a distinct 
muscular movement, namely, to that complex 
movement by which all the organs concerned 
in the production of a sound are moved into 
the necessary relative situations. Where this 
organic provision is lacking, the conception of 
the sound may be present, but it will not be 
manifested in movements of the vocal organs. 
Now, I think that in general there is such an 
arrangement of the nerves in all animals en- 
dowed with voice ; but in man alone probably 
is this organ so exquisitely developed that 
there is not only a power of discriminating 
between the most various sounds as to their 
pitch no less than as to their melodiousness 
and timber, but also a finely organized adapta- 
tion of the motor nerves to the reproduction of 
all these peculiarities. This is what might be 
called a corporeal organ of speech; for the 
body 's contribution to the formation of speech 
can not extend certainly further than to pla- 
cing at the soul's disposal this pliable medium 
of expression, and to inducing it to make use 
of the same by means of the already mentioned 

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physiological impulse. Physiologists seem, in 
fact, to have been so fortunate as to discover 
the organ in one of the anterior convolutions 
of the cerebral lobes — injury in this spot 
being followed by aphasia, i.e., want of power 
to make the desired speech-movements follow 
the conceptions of sounds. 

When we compare the training of speech to 
deaf mutes with the training of parrots, we 
find that one and the same result is reached 
from two different starting points. The form- 
er are deficient in conceptions of sound, but 
their organs of speech are constituted like 
those of their speaking teacher. By means of 
their human capacity of attention they can 
therefore be brought by careful and laborious 
training not only to form a conception of the 
particular movement of these organs that cor- 
responds to a seen character, but also to exe- 
cute this movement and produce the required 
tone. Now, the feeling of movement experi- 
enced by the deaf mute during utterance 
forms for his memory in future the starting- 
point which his consciousness first repeats on 
meeting again with the character, and which 
then is followed with mechanical ease by the 
renewed execution of the movement. Of 
course the modulation of speech so acquired 
will never quite lose the harshness proceeding 
from the want of a perception of the pro- 
duced result. The bird under training, on the 
other hand, has the conception of the sound, 

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but externally his organs are so unlike those 
of his human teacher that his animal intelli- 
gence finds the chief difficulty in guessing 
how the latter produces the sound, and how 
he himself must manage his differently con- 
structed vocal organs in order to produce the 
same. Obviously this can be done only if the 
bird's organization is such that the tone-con- 
ception, in so far as it is at the same time 
stimulation of the nervous tract, acts directly 
on the vocal nerves, and at once effects for 
the bird what he could not of himself bring 
about. To the human child only this mode of 
learning to speak is natural ; it learns words 
not by watching the mouth, but through its 
vocal organs being directed by its conception 
of sound. Two things are remarkable: the 
extraordinary interest with which the child 
devotes himself to this working of his organs 
of motion, and at the same time the trouble 
which it costs him to become fully master of 
them. At a time when the motion of the other 
parts of the body is far behind the agility al- 
ready attained by animals of the same age, 
there awakes — generally along with panto- 
mimic movements — the effort to talk by means 
of the most marvelous curling of the lips, con- 
tortions of the mouth, and movements of the 
tongue; while usually the power of moving 
the palate and back parts of the cavity of the 
mouth is acquired later. By observing these 
phenomena one can obtain ocular evidence of 

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the working of a physiological impulse evi- 
dently here impelling the inner states of the 
general sense into this particular form of ex- 
pression. And the difficulty which, neverthe- 
less, is met with in bringing these movements 
wholly under control in no wise tends to 
weaken our conviction of an organic founda- 
tion for them. Just as the eyes, whose whole 
structure undoubtedly is adapted for the regu- 
lar uniting of the rays of light, do not per- 
form this office immediately after birth — nay, 
are scarce capable of discerning a faint gleam 
of light — so probably the delicate perception 
of distinctness in tones and sounds is not from 
the first present in perfection, but is gradually 
developed out of an indefinite susceptibility to 
sound in general, in proportion as its delicacy 
increases, the instinctive working of its stimu- 
lations on the vocal organs also becomes more 
distinct. 

I close these observations on the share of the 
body in the formation of speech with a sum- 
mary glance over a field that the wider scope 
of these inquiries does not permit of my ex- 
amining. That the bodily organization should 
have a share in the conditions of speech will 
not seem unnatural to those who bear in mind 
that we are here dealing not so much with an 
operation of the mental energy itself as with 
the manifestation of this operation in the 
form of a physical phenomenon. Here the 
mind is not at home, and it suffers no loss of 

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dignity by having its medium of expression 
sound, and the power of using this medium 
conferred on it without any choice of its own 
Ly independent bodily impulses. In the fur- 
ther development of speech traces of this 
physiological influence may still be discerned 
in some of the phenomena. Not merely the 
general selection of the sounds utilized in the 
language of any particular people may pro- 
ceed from minute peculiarities in the structure 
of its vocal organs, again in part perhaps de- 
pendent on climatic conditions (e.g., we find 
widely diffused among the inhabitants of 
mountainous countries a preference for the 
harsh palatal sounds, and among dwellers in 
islands for dental consonants) ; but also the 
modifications of vowels and consonants in the 
inflexion and composition of words suggest the 
idea of their being, in part at least, the result 
of organic conditions. But the precise nature 
of these it would be very difficult to state. 
Already we tread on doubtful ground in ask- 
ing whether the tendency to these alterations 
in sounds is acoustic or phonetic — I mean, 
whether they are made in order to offer the 
ear a euphonious balance in the distribution 
and succession of heavier and lighter sounds, 
in harmony especially with the accentuation, 
so that the complete word may float before 
the sense of hearing like a correctly drawn 
and proportioned figure; or whether it is 
mainly the convenience of the vocal organs 

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(which do not slip with equal ease from every 
position into every other, and can not repeat 
every movement frequently in succession) 
that leads, above all things, to a construction 
of sounds that are easy of pronunciation. 
This last influence tells in the vulgar pro- 
nunciation of words correctly known; on the 
other hand, the explanation of the fact that 
in most languages the words borrowed from 
another, especially the proper names, are mod- 
ified in accordance with native usage, is to be 
found not always in phonetic convenience, 
but frequently also in the need felt to con- 
vert the foreign into the familiar structure of 
sounds, as if that alone were normal and cor- 
rect. Nay, a third cause — of grammatical 
character — may often concur — e.g., a sequence 
of sounds that in compound words is avoided 
as disagreeable by modification of a primitive 
vowel occurs in close juxtaposition in the in- 
flexion of a simple word, and here does not 
call forth the slightest effort at alteration. 
Neither the auricular image of it, then, is in 
itself displeasing, nor is the pronunciation 
difficult, but it is displeasing in comparison 
with the syntactic value of the one word, and 
pleasing in comparison with that of the other. 
This last remark leads us to the point where, 
strictly speaking, human speech begins. From 
what has gone before, nothing more could be 
inferred than a tendency to a musical exercise 
of the voice that renounced the attempt to 

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make use of differences of pitch, and employed 
instead varieties in sounds. Language begins 
with the meaning attached to these sounds, 
and the peculiar form of thought into which 
that meaning is thrown — a form which is 
either itself also exprest in sounds, or, remain- 
ing unexprest, makes the significant sound 
into a word capable of being syntactically 
combined with others. 

Of these various elements, taking first into 
consideration the contained meaning, we know 
that nowadays it is handed on exclusively by 
transmission from one to another, and that 
our sentient fantasy is utterly incapable of 
divining from the sound of the words in a 
civilized language a meaning such as shall 
necessarily correspond to it. It is supposed 
that in the infancy of speech this was not so ; 
that then each one, at least of the simple 
sense-perceptions that men first strove to com- 
municate, had a sound answering to it, and 
that it is possible in root words to recognize 
the meaning attached by the still unsophisti- 
cated and fresh fantasy of man to each vowel 
and each consonant, and each simple combina- 
tion of them. Perhaps it is the fault of our 
present artificiality that we have no longer 
any feeling of this, and that — to be candid — 
most roots seem to us to have come by their 
meaning quite as a matter of chance; at all 
events nothing is more precarious than any 
attempt now to prove the inherent necessity 

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of the connection between the two. Two 
things we must, moreover, take into account. 
The physiological tendency with which we 
have become acquainted would in itself lead 
only to the expression of the particular kind 
and amount of mental stimulation produced 
in us by an impression from without, but it 
would throw no light on the nature of the 
cause of this impression. According to the 
varying degree of mental susceptibility, partly 
individual and permanent, partly belonging 
to the moment, the stimulation produced by 
the same irritant would prove very variable, 
and here one sound, there another, would with 
equal physiological necessity attach itself as a 
name to the same thing. Tolerably similar 
designations could be expected only for such 
objects or events as exert an influence power- 
ful enough to compel similar stimulations in 
every frame of mind. But we allow that there 
is another tendency of the fantasy, whose 
office it is, abstracting from the nature of the 
passive subjective state, to present a copy of 
the objective character of the irritant whence 
the impression proceeds. To this tendency 
we must in great part attribute the develop- 
ment of language, which even in its begin- 
nings was no mere collection of emotional ut- 
terances, but with genuinely human compre- 
hensiveness of interest strove to communicate 
also the tranquil moods of mind and the pas- 
sionless results of the train of thought. The 

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result of this representative tendency would, 
however, be uniform and general only sup- 
posing our sentience found in the single 
sounds with which it had to work a decided 
similarity to perceptible qualities of things, 
and to the forms of events. A perfectly plain 
and directly intelligible system of symbols 
would then instruct every one to associate with 
a particular idea only one particular sound, 
with the sound only that idea. But clearly 
this is not the case, and can not be the case, 
because most objects of perception present a 
number of marks, and yet no rule determines 
in what order of sequence our attention is to 
combine these, or which it is to single out and 
make the basis of nomenclature. After all, 
then, only those w^ords are directly intelligible 
which imitate an actual natural sound — a re- 
stricted and comparatively unimportant part 
of the stock of language. 

Let us, then, be content to leave undecided 
the origin of the simplest words ; there is still 
a rich field for a research confining itself to 
tracing the paths by which the fantasy of 
races, out of the few terms for sensibly per- 
ceived objects that doubtless formed the origi- 
nal amount of their store of words, has gradu- 
ally acquired expressions for the endless vari- 
ety of supersensible ideas and their subtle and 
complex relationships. We shall find, if we 
devote ourselves to this employment, that in 
the attempts to denote new objects or new re- 

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suits of reflection by judicious comparison 
with others already known or named, there is 
displayed, not only an exceedingly vigorous 
activity of the comparative imagination, but 
activity of a kind that enters essentially into 
the mental character of a nation and its mode 
of conception. The analogies, similes, and 
images which in our developed languages only 
poetry still employs, in order to replace the 
now ineffective diction of every-day life by 
expressions whose meaning, not yet worn 
threadbare, again brings freshly home to us 
the value of what they denote. All these 
means belong naturally to the youth of lan- 
guage, and the flowery speech of many tribes 
not cultivated by reflection resembles in this 
respect not a little the manner of expression 
common to its earliest stages. Many a word 
that now briefly and with clean-cut impress 
denotes an object indeed, but seems to tell 
nothing about its nature, contains in its orig- 
inal full form — which etymological research 
can sometimes trace — a significant attempt at 
a theory, at an explanation of the thing de- 
noted. Of course, the strange error is not now 
to be justified of seeking to determine the 
nature of things from the meaning of their 
names, and of taking the notions deposited in 
these names by the word-forming fantasy of 
primitive times as a clue to guide us in attain- 
ing a knowledge of the things named. There 
is, however, a deep interest — and one not for- 

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eign to our subject — in observing what par- 
ticular attribute of an object most strongly 
attracted that fantasy by its novelty or its 
importance, hence causing the name to be fixt 
with reference to it. We should frequently 
find how delicate was the comparative percep- 
tion of these times of which no historic retro- 
spect can now be distinct, with what suscepti- 
bility it often laid hold of the most general 
and not always the most obvious resemblances 
and connections of phenomena, and how even 
in languages of different types the similar 
comparisons implied in their terms for the 
same objects not seldom offer individual in- 
stances of a surprizing identity of procedure 
in the common human fantasy. But these 
fascinating researches, which become convinc- 
ing and instructive only through the collection 
of a mass of details, lie outside the narrower 
path here prescribed to us. We can take up 
language again only after it has reached a 
stage of its growth at which the primitive 
meaning of these picturesque word formations 
has long since been forgotten. Most of the 
syllables that at first, through association with 
perceived phenomena, figuratively exprest the 
character of a notion, have passed into inflec- 
tions, terminations, and prefixes, and serve 
only to indicate sharply, but with colorless 
abstraction, the formal setting that thought 
seeks to give to the content of the main con- 
stituent of the earlier compoujid. 

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In now entering on the consideration of this 
relation between speech and thought, we are 
about to encounter questions that in them- 
selves are not very obscure and scarcely to be 
called equivocal, yet which, in consequence of 
the one-sidedness with which they were form- 
erly discust, have given rise to much hot dis- 
putation. Whatever more strict sense we may 
give to the term thought, at any rate speech 
is not thought itself but its expression, and 
further, the expression, not of it alone, but 
also of every other movement of mind — of 
passion no less than of tranquil feeling. Now 
it is easy to see that speech may pass over 
much that thought, in order to be complete, 
must include; as in every-day conversation 
many connecting members are left to be un- 
derstood by the listener, so even the typical 
forms of construction of a language may be 
an incomplete, but for all purposes sufficient, 
expression of the articulation of thought. It 
is then to make a needless demand to require 
that the verbal organization of discourse shall 
fully correspond to the logical organization of 
thought. On the other hand, the end of speech 
is not merely to be a brief communication of 
thoughts ; in order to move the mind of an- 
other, to persuade, to set forth his own feel- 
ing with picturesque clearness, and to repro- 
duce it in his hearer, to indicate his own 
conviction or uncertainty, to discriminate be- 
tween the doubting query and the assertion, 

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between the direct demand and the more 
modest wish, between indignant rejection of 
an idea and its mere denial — for all these pur- 
poses the speaker must be able to invest the 
content proper of his thought in manifold 
forms that add no material part to the logical 
structure of his sentence, yet throw over all 
its parts a peculiar coloring of merely psy- 
chological significance. Of course the sum of 
these secondary determinations might, if one 
cared to take the trouble, be also broken up 
into sentences of logical brevity, and in this 
form be added to the main affirmation; but 
it is certainly not the natural office of speech 
to say ineffectively and in a prolix manner 
what it can say shortly and emphatically. On 
the other hand, there can be added with equal 
facility those other qualifications which belong 
to the thought in its completeness, but are 
passed over; and to do this is of more use. 
For very often logic, altho all it has to do is 
to inquire what is the thought underlying any 
proposition, no matter how much of it is ex- 
prest, has allowed itself to be led by the in- 
completeness of the expression into needless 
and protracted questionings. 

But one thing must be borne in mind: to 
whatever extent language is designed to in- 
clude the subtlest movements of feeling, only 
such exhibitions come within the province of 
speech as are in some way exprest under the 
forms of thought. No more than the modula- 

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tion of the voice and the accompanying ges- 
ture does the mere sound of exclamation be- 
long to language, even when its meaning is 
unequivocal ; besides the articulation and sig- 
nificance of the sound, there must be further 
a peculiar form of intelligent conception that 
makes the sound a word, and gives it its syn- 
tactical value. In order to review these rela- 
tionships, we must enter at some length into 
the peculiar nature of thought and the very 
close connection betwen it and language that 
has induced us to subject to a common exam- 
ination these two characteristic elements of 
human culture. 

On the former occasion I endeavored to il- 
lustrate a distinction which we have to make 
between the thinking that alone deserves that 
name par excellence, and the train of ideas 
produced by the universal laws of psychic 
mechanism in all animated beings in like man- 
ner, but with very different degrees of vivac- 
ity. In the latter our consciousness is mainly 
receptive and passive; it receives the various 
impressions that beset it from the environment 
with or without connection, with or without 
order, as chance brings them ; further, it per- 
mits memory, according to the general rules 
of the association and recollection of ideas, to 
repeat the several impressions in the same 
combination, sometimes significant, sometimes 
meaningless, in which they were held in the 
original perception. It might seem that a 

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long continuance of this train of ideas would 
gradually of itself eliminate the accidental 
character of its connection ; for in the course 
of things unconnected details do indeed some- 
times occur together, but not in constant con- 
junction. When, therefore, we survey a con- 
siderable tract of our experience, we find that 
the more numerous combinations of connected 
objects gain the preponderance over the more 
rarely repeated combinations of the phenom- 
ena brought together merely by chance. Thus 
are gradually formed fixt images of particu- 
lar objects, which detach themselves as per- 
manently coherent groups of attributes from 
other shifting perceptions; from the concat- 
enation of events there arise distinct remem- 
brances that lead us instinctively to expect 
from present circumstances those consequences 
which actually flow from them with natural 
consistency. But however sufficiently in this 
manner the thus improved train of ideas may 
qualify the soul of an animal for finding its 
place in the sphere of its experience and at- 
tending to the gratification of its appetites, 
there is yet an utter absence of one mental 
operation which, as we have found, forms part 
of human thought. We do not at first merely 
receptively and passively receive the partly 
correct, partly incorrect combinations of im- 
pressions presented by perception, and later 
the amended selection of these left behind by 
the self-correcting movement of the psychic 

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mechanism. Our thought, with independent 
action, breaks up the accidental associations 
of ideas, and, instead of merely leaving intact 
those which are coherent, put them through 
a process of reproduction, after which they 
appear in forms that at the same time contain 
an indication of the reason why they are com- 
bined. Even animal consciousness is right as 
to the content of its thought when, with the 
image of a burden about to be laid on, it 
associates the anticipation of a painful pres- 
sure; the human judgment, the burden is 
heavy, adds nothing to this content, but, mak- 
ing the burden the subject out of which the 
pressure flows, it vindicates the combination 
of the two conceptions from the nature of 
their content, from the connection between 
cause and effect, and explains the merely 
actual combination of the two in conscious- 
ness by an objectively valid law, in virtue of 
which they cohere. It is needless to accumu- 
late examples of this kind; if the mechanism 
of ideation provides not only for the bringing 
together of the content of consciousness, but 
also to a certain extent for the elimination of 
the essentially coherent from the accidentally 
combined, yet it is thinking alone that exer- 
cises on this content, that constant criticism 
by means of which our hypotheses in regard 
to the necessary connection of all things and 
events are worked up into a perception of the 
sam.e, and the merely intuitive picture drawn 

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by sentience and psychic mechanism, is quick- 
ened by a discernment of the internal bonds 
that hold together its several points. 

This peculiar activity of thought comes to 
manifestation in the organization of language, 
and on the other hand is aided by the latter 
in its operations. To consider, first, the first 
part of this relationship, it is not necessary 
that each several operation of thought should 
have its own special expression ; but language 
must separate from one another the simple 
elements of thought, by whose employment 
and combination all the more refined and ele- 
vated offices of thought are fulfilled, in forms 
that make such employment possible. It is 
not, it appears to me, fitting to begin the 
treatment of logic, as is usually done, with an 
investigation of the simplest form of combina- 
tion in which thought unites heterogeneous 
mental elements. There is a still simpler and 
a prior task wiiich it has perforce to fulfil ; it 
has to give to every simple element, in order 
to make it capable of combination with others, 
a definite form through which, from a mere 
impression, the raw product of psychic stimu- 
lation, it is transformed into an organically 
utilizable thought-atom. The combinations 
into which thought strives to bring the mani- 
fold content are distinguished especially by 
the prominence in them of internal architec- 
tonic structure from the mere conglomera- 
tion which the psychic mechanism is adequate 

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to effect. Stones can always be piled in a 
heap, whatever their form, if it does not mat- 
ter how they are arranged; an edifice that is 
to be borne up and sustained by forces work- 
ing in diverse directions can not be put to- 
gether out of merely spherical constituent 
parts — for any design and plan the stones 
must be hewn into such shapes that they may 
mutually strengthen one another, and offer 
notched surfaces for adhesion and dovetail- 
ing. In like manner thought can not directly 
make use of sensations, feelings, moods, sim- 
ple or complex images, as materials for its 
structure; each of these elements, which are 
primarily but states of stimulation, it must 
apprehend in a form that in the subsequent 
combination decides on the manner of its em- 
ployment and the particular fashion in which 
it is grouped with others. Language exhibits 
this first operation of thought in the distinc- 
tion of its parts of speech. Inasmuch as it 
apprehends a content substantively, it recog- 
nizes it as something independent, self-suffi- 
cing, capable of acting as the starting-point 
of a second and the point of destination of a 
third content; complete in itself and a self- 
sufficing whole, the substantive is the natural 
form in which the primitive language-build- 
ers exprest the notion of a thing, and w^hich 
they therefore at first used to designate noth- 
ing that does not present itself to the eye of 
sense-perception as an independent object. 

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The content stamped with the adjective char- 
acter is thereby declared to be not independ- 
ent, to be something whose existence, definite 
quantity, form, and limitation come from an- 
other and a substantive content, on which it 
is of necessity in a perpetual state of depend- 
ence; and the sensible properties of things, 
as exhibited by these in a state of repose, are 
what first held fast in this form of adjectiv- 
ity. To these elements language adds the 
third and indispensable one of the verb, in 
order to indicate the flux by which the course 
of events connects together these motionless 
images; this, too, is a form at first intended 
for the reflection of sensible changes, but soon 
employed also to express relationships be- 
tween things in repose — from the movement 
of our comparative thought, by which alone 
we apprehend relationships, being interpreted 
as reciprocal movements of the subjects of the 
relationships. 

It is enough to have spoken of these three 
forms which are indispensable to speech; let 
us leave to philology not only the question 
which of them is the more original, and prior 
to the others, but also the genetic history of 
other forms which, as prepositions and con- 
junctions, by the introduction of complex no- 
tions of relation, elaborate language into a 
perfectly pliable medium of expression for 
thought. Let us be content with clearly recog- 
nizing that those three forms present the 

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minimum of organization and division of pre- 
sented matter with which thought can attempt 
to begin its operations. Without them our 
train of ideas would be but a silent, our speak- 
ing but an audible, strain of music; ideas 
and tones might indeed refer to one another 
and reveal their affinities and antagonisms to 
feeling, but all the sharply discriminative ar- 
rangement would have disappeared that had 
been established by a definite form of inner 
connection. However full of meaning the 
music of a song may be, it is quite different 
in character from the words; no note in it is 
anything substantive waiting for an adjective 
attribute to be attached to it ; none more than 
the rest expresses action proceeding from an- 
other as its living subject, and passing over 
to a third as its passive object. Never do two 
tones enter into one of those manifold articu- 
late relations which language denotes by the 
cases of substantives, by the active and passive 
voices of verbs; the genitive that joins the 
possessor to the possession; the accusative 
that connects with the agent the result of his 
action, musical harmony has no means ade- 
quate to express. Now this is what we signal- 
ized above as the peculiar function through 
which the significant sound really becomes a 
ward; for it is not made such by its signifi- 
cance; on the contrary, the interjections 
which most purely and directly express psy- 
chic excitement form an unorganized residue 

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of the material of language. The sound 
becomes a word by means of the logical ac- 
cessory thoughts displayed in the character of 
the parts of speech; they serve as uniting 
surfaces and joints for the various contents, 
which thus become capable of syntactic com- 
bination in the service of thought. 

I do not think much of the objection to this 
view drawn from the fact that in many lan- 
guages the distinction between the parts of 
speech is not embodied in special sound-forms 
answering severally to each. What is of con- 
sequence is not that the form of our thought 
should be reflected in that of the sound, but 
only that it should be present as an accom- 
panying act of thought. "Whether or not a 
language indicates its substantives by any ex- 
ternal mark, its syntactically formless word 
is nevertheless made into a substantive by the 
mind of the speaker who utters it with the 
thought of the substantiality of its content. 
Thought is not so absolutely dependent on 
language that combinations of sounds are of 
necessity the medium through which it ex- 
presses its formal conception of the content of 
presentations. Had Nature imposed instead 
of speech some other mode of expression on 
the human mind, it would have endeavored 
to express through this other medium in equiv- 
alent forms the same distinctions which we 
have in language under the form of parts of 
speech ; even had no means of expression been 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

at its disposal, it would none the less have con- 
tinued inwardly to make the same distinctions, 
tho in this case much hindered by the absence 
of the reflex assistance that thought receives 
from its external medium of expression. The 
grammatical form of language may therefore 
lag behind its logical articulation ; but where 
it does so the language is in a backward stage, 
and every language free alike from primitive 
crudeness and from the disintegration of de- 
cay will express the logical distinctions of its 
stock of words even in their audible sound- 
structure. To a far greater extent, indeed, 
the language-forming fantasy goes beyond the 
needs of thought, and produces a great num- 
ber of grammatical forms and syntactical 
rules that with the progressive advance of 
reflection are gradually allowed to drop as 
superfluous. Thus substantives and verbs 
have gradually lost the wealth of inflections 
that distinguished them in the earlier stages 
of language, and thought has learned, by put- 
ting together many auxiliary words, to re- 
place the delicate shades of expression which 
they embodied ; on the other hand, the variety 
of genders in substantives and adjectives, and 
the obligation on the latter to conform to the 
former, are still retained in different lan- 
guages to different extents — a luxury of speech 
this, and an ingenious one, which yet forms 
merely a superfluous esthetic appendage to the 
logically necessary systematization of thought. 

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Superfluous, that is, if we choose to look on 
language as exclusively a reproduction of the 
most general means of thought, through whose 
arbitrary application the knowledge of things 
is to be attained. But unquestionably from 
the first it was meant to be more; a great 
part of the work that had to be done it has 
already done for consciousness. Every object 
of eternal perception, every event, every ex- 
tended figure pictured by us in imagination, 
every relationship between several things, may 
be approached on different sides by our re- 
flective attention. Almost every content, 
therefore, admits of more than one notion 
being formed of it, according as we begin our 
construction with this or that constituent or 
point of relation, and add the others in this 
or that order of succession. The names of 
objects in a language of long standing are 
sufficiently set free from remembrances of 
their earlier meaning, the forms of construc- 
tion by which relationships are indicated have 
become sufficiently detached, to leave freer 
scope to the imagination in this aff'air of in- 
dividual fancy; former generations must in 
this respect have felt themselves under greater 
restraint. From the origin of their words 
being still in remembrance, and the mode of 
their combination being under stricter regula- 
tion, they must have been surrounded as with 
an atmosphere of common, national thought, 
which had already fixt the standard of con- 

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ception in regard to innumerable objects and 
relations of objects, and to continue to think 
in the spirit of this seemed naturally incumb- 
ent on the individual. This is the somewhat 
dubious gift of a developed language that 
invents and thinks for us. If, however, we 
consider the inestimable advantage accruing 
to each individual from the inexhaustible, 
boundless riches of the world of thought 
thrown open to him, which he would be wholly 
unable to create for himself by his own pow- 
ers, we lose sight of the slight disadvantage 
of his being thus trained to certain one-sided 
modes of conception. At any rate, the effort 
to order one's own thoughts with unrestrained 
individual freedom can be made only when 
when it has a point of departure in this na- 
tional treasure of wisdom handed down in 
the language, and can thence draw strength 
for progress. Besides, in course of time a 
change takes place in this relation between 
language and thought. The more men ad- 
vance from simple conditions of life, in which 
the poetic and genial phase of social relation- 
ships prevails for good and for ill, to division 
of labor — set about reflecting on and examin- 
ing the nature of things, and begin to speak 
more of business than of feelings — the more, 
in a word, the working prose of life becomes 
developed, so much the more does language 
drop the crude prejudgments concerning 
things which it originally contained. By the 

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obliteration of their etymology its words be- 
come mere denotations by means of sounds; 
the pleasure in sound and its harmonic vari- 
eties dies away; old time-honored forms of 
construction perish in consequence of the prac- 
tical need of terse and accurate modes of stat- 
ing new relationships. Hence at last we find 
particular departments — as that of mathe- 
matics — advancing almost to independence of 
words, and avoiding the prolixity of speech 
by a mere sequence of sound-symbols, whose 
visible connection as written characters is 
often exprest merely by pauses and accentua- 
tions in speech. Hence, in general, in the 
course of a vigorous development, much out- 
ward beauty is lost, and those nations do not 
usually advance on this path which continue 
with much display of sonorous euphony to 
say little in many words. 

In a survey of the historical development of 
nations, these relations, to which it is here 
sufficient to refer, would naturally receive 
fuller consideration. On the other hand, a 
more general inquiry to which we have here 
to devote ourselves, links itself on to these 
remarks on the reaction of language on the 
development of ideas. As speech has been 
called thinking aloud, so the converse proposi- 
tion — ^that thought is silent speech — has not 
failed to make its appearance. None of the 
points connected with this subject has been the 
cause of more disagreement than this one. 

178 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

On the one side, the capacity of speech is 
looked on as constituting the decisive superior- 
ity of human nature, and as alone enabling 
it to develop veritable thought out of the 
merely mechanical train of ideas ; on the other, 
tho the advantages of speech are not denied, 
not only is thought held to be independent of 
it, but it sometimes seems doubtful whether 
they are not overweighed by the disadvan- 
tages entailed by the habit of mentally cloth- 
ing all thoughts in words. 

In this respect attention has often been 
called to the fact that, unknown to ourselves, 
a strange superstition grows up within us: 
How apt are we to fancy that an object whose 
properties we have examined thoroughly, and 
of which we have formed a complete image, 
is yet not fully known to us so long as we are 
ignorant of its name. The sound of the name 
seems suddenly to dispel this degree of obscu- 
rity, tho it adds nothing to the content — does 
not even always bring the light implied in in- 
dicating the particular place belonging to the 
object in a series, or within the sphere of 
some wider notion. Young botanists delight 
in learning the Latin names of wayside flow- 
ers, and go contented on their way only to be 
presently disturbed by a mountain that, 
strange to say, has no name, and so has prop- 
erly speaking no right to be there. Now, what 
do they miss in the one case ? What did they 
gain in the other? I can not look on this 

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fancy as so insignificant as it appears — nay, 
I see in it a counterpart or continuation of 
the genuinely human mode of conception on 
which I dwelt in discussing sentience. We are 
not satisfied with the perception of an object; 
its existence becomes legitimate only when it 
forms part of a regular system of things that 
has its own significance quite apart from our 
perception. Now, if we can not actuall}^ fix 
the place occupied by a product of Nature in 
the universe, the name, at all events, allays 
our disquietude; it at least bears evidence 
that the attention of many others had already 
been directed to the object at which we are 
now looking; it assures us that the general 
mind has at least been engaged in assigning 
to this object its special place in the connection 
of a greater whole. On this account it is that 
a name given arbitrarily by ourselves is no 
name ; it is not enough that a thing is called 
somehow by us ; we must have its real name ; 
the name must be evidence of its having been 
received into the world of the universally 
known and recognized, and thus confront in- 
dividual caprice as the peculiar and abiding 
determination of the thing. How little is this 
attended to by those who allow themselves to 
be led by the trifling peculiarities of their sub- 
jective line of thought, by the whims of their 
imagination, eager for new and capricious 
paths, to clothe old thoughts in an unusual 
phraseology, to overturn the established no- 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

menclature of the sciences, and to perform 
the marvelous feat of calling all things by 
other than their names! Only the first dis- 
coverer of an object, or the first inventor of a 
scientifically efficient abstraction, is entitled to 
bestow the name under which he takes pos- 
session for science of this newly won point. 

More serious is the other complaint, that 
during the long use of speech a multitude of 
modes of expression are accumulated, which, 
by means of the syntactic pliability of lan- 
guage, can be very conveniently combined to- 
gether, but with which thought can not keep 
pace. Much can be done with words, and as 
what is evidently nonsense must admit of 
being, grammatically and syntactically, quite 
correctly and elegantly exprest, even that it 
may be examined and denied; still more, by 
the readiness with which a grammatically 
faultless form can be assumed, half-true, con- 
fused, distorted statements may be made to 
deceive by an appearance of perfect correct- 
ness. These processes can be most clearly 
traced in the combinations of mathematical 
symbolic language. Many particular groups 
of signs bearing on one another, at first de- 
vised for a special case to express a relation 
there comprehensible, may afterward be made 
to undergo a series of changes or of applica- 
tions that for the moment have no assignable 
meaning, may frequently receive none even 
when we continue to calculate with them, yet 

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sometimes lead to the discovery of new and 
veritable relations, whose meaning we only 
afterward begin to understand. The pliabil- 
ity of language very rarely indeed leads to 
such favorable results; for the most part, it 
only suggests modes of conception that depart 
further and further from the truth. We must 
be content to adduce a single but compre- 
hensive example of this very fruitful source 
of error. The substantive form belongs origi- 
nally only to things, the adjective form to 
qualities, the verb form to events. But, of 
course, language could not in its judgments 
always begin with the thing, and annex qual- 
ities and action to this as the subject; it had 
to make the qualities in themselves and action 
in itself also matter of its reflection. Hence 
it severed their connection with things, and 
gave them a substantive form, either by add- 
ing a peculiar termination to express this new 
character, or by transforming the infinitive 
of the verb or the neuter of the adjective into 
a consistent, complete, and independent whole 
by means of a prefixt article. When we sur- 
vey the still continued controversies of scien- 
tific men, who are mainly occupied with gen- 
eral notions, and can not protect themselves 
from error by the constant check ©f regulative 
perception of some sort, we can not but ac- 
knowledge that nothing is more fatal than this 
one case of the pliability of language. Almost 
invariably we find a tendency to make the 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

newly acquired syntactic dignity of words 
convertible with a new metaphysical dignity 
acquired by their matter. Thus, we have al- 
most ceased to speak of beautiful objects — i.e., 
we forget that what we call beautiful is origi- 
nally a mere adjective determination not ex- 
isting apart from a subject; we speak now of 
the heautiful, or at the best of beauty, and our 
esthetic thinkers are quite convinced that what 
can exist only as an attribute is correctly ap- 
prehended only when it has unnaturally been 
apprehended as something substantive which 
is everywhere identical. Need we recall the 
host of similar instances — the infinite, the evil 
— or speak of the mischief wrought in ethical 
inquiries by the habit of speaking, not of the 
freely willing mind, but of freedom; as if it 
were a power acting independently, whose 
energy and achievements could be judged 
without reference to the nature of the mind 
to which it pertains? 

In all these cases languages creates for us a 
mythology, from which, of course, in the use 
of language we can never wholly set ourselves 
free without becoming pedantically precise, 
but against the influence of which on the 
molding of our thoughts we ought to be care- 
fully on our guard. Logic does not always 
assist us in this direction, nay, sometimes in 
its methods makes pernicious concessions to 
this false tendency arising from the use of 
language. It requires that a term to be de- 

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fined shall be subordinated under a higher 
general notion (which, of course, is always 
put into substantive form), a special mark 
being added. In this way adjectival and ver- 
bal contents under the process of definition 
lose their natural form and position, which 
they would retain if the same plan were pur- 
sued as in plain people's awkward but more 
correct attempts at definition. It may be a 
matter of comparative indifference whether 
one says that, Disease is any departure of the 
body from its normal state, or prefers to say 
that, A living body is diseased when it is not 
in this normal state; but the latter definition, 
in which what can not exist save as the state 
quality of something else appears as an ad- 
jective, and is distinctly annexed to the sub- 
ject in which alone it has its being, is formally 
the more correct and the more suitable. Tho 
we may affirm that, Elasticity is that property 
of bodies by which they return to their orig- 
inal form, the proposition, A body is elastic 
when it does this, is unquestionably to be pre- 
ferred; for the first form plainly contains 
the germ of a metaphysically false conception 
sure to be developed out of such use of terms, 
namely, the conception of a property, which 
is nothing else than the denotation of an ef- 
fect, as the efficient cause or productive means 
of that effect. Mathematics and Physics, to 
which almost all that still remains of true and 
fruitful logic has betaken itself, have adopted 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

this hypothetical form of definition wherever 
definition is required by the nature of the 
subject. 

But language does not exist solely to min- 
ister to thought, and to our poetically living 
and sj^mpathetic apprehension of the world 
and its events that substantializing of depend- 
ent conceptions is no less indispensable than 
it is dangerous for thought. The same holds 
true of another drawback of language which 
is but rarely felt, yet when it is plainly per- 
ceived, is seen to be of some magnitude. See- 
ing that in speech the elements of thought are 
only successively presented, even in the most 
natural style of expression it is impossible 
always to avoid an order of words occurring 
that does not answer to the combination of the 
ideas denoted by them ; but in a cultured style, 
with its tendency to intertwine much that in 
simpler speech is exprest in detached coordi- 
nate clauses, there is often a most striking per- 
version of the order apparently required by 
the general purport of the context. Undoubt- 
edly an awkward use of these liberties is felt 
as cumbrous obscurity ; but how much can be 
tolerated in this respect by our conceptive and 
constructive imagination is shown most plain- 
ly by the collocation of words in Latin poetry. 
Even where they divide closely coherent and 
separately unintelligible parts of the dis- 
course, we yet can often hit upon a manner 
of reading and accenting such as even in this 

185 



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situation enables us to discern their connec- 
tion. In general, however, it seems to me a 
mistake to look upon that which most closely 
conforms to logical order as the best arrange- 
ment of words. On the contrary, one of the 
ends of language is to supply the place of 
perception. Now, as here, it very frequently 
happens that the unimportant comprehensive 
background or some striking detail first shows 
itself, and not till afterward the more im- 
portant event, as the obvious effect comes be- 
fore the hidden cause, or passivity on the one 
side before compensating activity on the 
other: so that discourse will be most distinct 
in which the several points of relation are 
marshaled in an order that brings them vivid- 
ly before the reproductive imagination, no 
matter whether or not this corresponds to the 
logical order of the relations involved. For 
as even in perception our judgment in regard 
to this inherent connection is little affected by 
the order of succession in which objects hap- 
pen to present themselves, so by thought we 
can very easily add to the given concrete image 
of an event those inherent relations by which 
it becomes intelligible; whereas the imagina- 
tion has a highly difficult task when it is called 
on to represent successively certain relations at 
the bidding of the preceding words, before it 
knows the concrete concluding points toward 
which the thought is tending. 

But if the deviation of spoken words from 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

the logical order of thought creates no serious 
difficulties, perhaps a more important hind- 
rance is involved in the amount of time which 
words occupy. Not merely in communication, 
it may be said, does speech mean the extension 
of an opinion to be exprest, of a brief sum of 
meaning, into a long discourse; but, further, 
the habit of making use of its converts' in- 
ward reflection into silence discourse, and thus 
exerts a retarding influence. Thinking, of 
course, itself requires some time in order to 
perform its task of putting a variety of ele- 
ments into relation; but the constant recol- 
lection of words needlessly protracts this time 
by its dependence on bodily conditions from 
which thinking could have kept itself free. 

Many facts confirm this assertion. In try- 
ing to recall a melody, one finds oneself bound 
to a certain time; one can not imagine a 
series of tones gone through in less time than 
it would take to sing it — well or ill. For we 
involuntarily accompany the auricular images 
of tone with slight incipient movements of the 
vocal organs, and we can not make the former 
succeed each other more rapidly than the lat- 
ter can follow upon one another. The music- 
al expert may succeed in warding off this 
habit of retardation, and putting himself into 
the position purely of a listener with regard 
to the tone-images that revive in his memory; 
but even he will distinctly recall no greater 
number of these tone-images in the unit of 

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time than the physiologically limited capacity 
of his auditory nerve would have allowed of 
his actually hearing within the same unit of 
time. We find the same thing in the recol- 
lection of w^ords; the many trifling difficul- 
ties caused to a speaker by the alternation of 
vowels and consonants retard the succession 
in the word-images even in the mere repre- 
sentation of discourse. Not for all to the 
same extent, however ; for the facility of mus- 
cular movement or of the varying impulses 
to it in different persons. It is found fre- 
quently, tho not without exception, that the 
propensity to rapid speech is inversely pro- 
portional to the length of the body. Very 
short people, just as from the shortness of 
their legs their pace is more swift and in 
general their heart-beat more frequent, have 
a natural tendency to speak quickly, and this 
whether they are also loquacious or whether 
they are taciturn, and only say rapidly the 
little they have to say. Tall persons will in 
general be found to speak slowly and phleg- 
matically; the rate of their discourse corre- 
sponds to their longer stride and greater slow- 
ness of heart-beat; for the rest, sometimes 
the stream of their discourse flows without 
interruption; sometimes they prefer to be 
silent on most subjects. It is long since these 
observations have become the property of the 
imitative imagination that moves in living 
human knowledge; with the aid of some ex- 

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STUDIES IN PROSE 

aggeration it has created out of small stature, 
with its sanguine, lively temperament, a fa- 
miliar comic type, in which are embodied a 
ready wit, a disposition to become eager about 
petty ends, and a tendency to rashness of all 
sorts; whereas the tall, phlegmatic form — by 
dint of the same exaggeration a no less favor- 
ite character — has been taken by it for the 
expression of circumstantial thoroughness and 
tardiness in ever respect. 

It is needless to inquire further into the 
accuracy of these trifling observations; even 
were they perfectly trustworthy, they would 
merely prove that our course of thought can 
not, so long as we convert its content into in- 
ward speech, exceed a moderate limit of ve- 
locity. But when w^e note the conscious im- 
patience with which our thought often would 
fain hurry on, while yet it is compelled to 
linger over a simple idea till the compound 
term for it has been audibly recalled to mind, 
we are enabled by this further observation 
ourselves to reduce within its true dimensions 
the disadvantage supposed to proceed from 
our being habituated to language. For here 
we have evidence that this retarding recollec- 
tion of words is not absolutely compulsory on 
our course of thought, which really outruns it, 
and that with us, as in the psychic life of the 
animals destitute of speech, a small space of 
time actually contains a great multitude of 
ideas in the regular coexistence and the me- 

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thodical sequence in virtue of which they be- 
come the motive of a present purposive action. 
But could this movement of wordless ideation 
by itself accomplish all that is really achieved, 
however leisurely, by the course of our 
thoughts when shackled by a persistent re- 
membrance of words? 

This question, we believe, must be answered 
in the negative — those views be rejected in 
which, under the influence of an enthusiasm 
for the ineffable, language is regarded as a 
source of detriment to a coveted higher knowl- 
edge. All that thought must of necessity, nay 
does, possess together in one indivisible mo- 
ment, language breaks up into a successive 
plurality, developing discursive thought out of 
the direct intuition of our representative fac- 
ulty. Thought running backrv^ard and for- 
ward moves between the sundered elements 
of its content, which the obstinate temporal 
course of this silent speech never allows of its 
uniting. That relative thinking to which we 
have already ascribed the dignity of being the 
germ of all higher intellectual development, 
we here find censured as the meager form in 
which habituation to language permits of our 
performing high functions only inadequately. 
For does not all this putting in relation defeat 
its own end? Had our imagination not al- 
ready under the guidance of slowly unfolding 
discourse divided the points that ought to be 
united, why should it require afterward la- 

190 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

boriously to bring the scattered elements into 
relation? This were in vain, if in our repre- 
sentative activity we have forgotten the first 
point of relation by the time we have come to 
the second; superfluous, if it is possible for 
us simultaneously to grasp the two, and also 
their relation, at the same undivided moment. 
In the first place, we must modify these 
accusations, for they touch not language 
alone, but even thought itself — nay, they 
touch our whole existence. Not only do we 
think discursively, but we also live so; not 
only do we elaborate perceptions in this fash- 
ion, but they present themselves in no other. 
At no moment are we both what we were and 
what we shall be; and even of what we are, 
we are at any one moment conscious to but a 
small extent. Objects present themselves alike 
f ragmentarily to us ; we do not feel the pulsa- 
tion that is the inmost life of things going 
directly through our heart ; the creative force 
that stirs in them, and the idea that binds 
their successive states into a whole, all this 
we must perforce seek to divine by means of 
the gradual combination of particular experi- 
ences ; what in itself may be one, can not but 
be to us an extended network of relations be- 
tween many things. If we desire, instead of 
this separation, that silent insight into things, 
not intuition of them, which forms our con- 
ception of the omniscient, toilless knowledge 
of God, we must be convinced that isolated 

191 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

moments of approach to such a state are 
granted to us, but that our incapacity to com- 
bine them into the permanent clearness of a 
thought without distinctions is the fault, not 
of language, but of our whole mental consti- 
tution. When we have listened to a poem re- 
cited, to a melody sung, and forget the words 
and the tones, while yet all that was in them 
lives on in an abiding mood of our soul ; when, 
after long deliberation and weighing of pros 
and cons, we have at length come to a resolu- 
tion, and in the purpose that now animates 
us feel combined and still efficient the im- 
pulses that before were severally weighed by 
our thought; w^hen we first send our glance 
over the scattered details of a landscape, and 
then, after the definite outlines have long dis- 
appeared from our memory, still preserve an 
indelible total impression; w^e actually suc- 
ceed in making that combination and fusion 
of myriads of details into the whole of a su- 
persensible intuition, which we but reluctant- 
ly again analyze into its constituent parts in 
order to communicate it to others. 

In all these cases we became something; 
the manifold did not remain outside of us, 
but the whole of its significant internal con- 
nection was repeated in a new state within 
ourselves with such perfection we could fancy 
we had transformed ourselves into the spirit 
of the phenomena that we admired. But only 
the Infinite Being that itself is all that it 

192 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

makes the object of its thought, could in this 
way enter into the being of all things, and, 
while entering into it, dispense with all the 
divining inquiry beginning from the outside. 
The finite mind has no alternative but to com- 
prehend the nature of things by means of 
analogies with its own. For it volition is not 
equivalent to accomplishment, thinking to ex- 
istence ; for it the active and passive elements 
are separated from each other as diverse 
points, and it can apprehend the unit>^ of 
what here is, and is done only as the trans- 
ference of an action from one thing to an- 
other; it does not discern clearly how the 
manifoldness of successive phenomena is iden- 
tical with the unity of being, and is forced to 
divide them as predicates from their subject, 
to which they are attached only by the thread 
of a relation; finally, for it, ends are not 
spontaneously achieved, by the one life of the 
idea, that is all in all, is converted into the 
cooperation of many means exhibiting them- 
selves as independent of each other. All these 
analogies, these notions of things and prop- 
erty, of force and effect, of being and phe- 
nomenon, and all the forms of relation into 
which these memhra disjecta are combined, 
must be employed by the human mind to gain 
a knowledge of things. And so indispensable 
to it is this putting into relation that even in 
any moment of exaltation in which we actu- 
ally find and enter into a higher unity, we 

193 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

feel restless and uneasy till we have exprest 
its content in some form of the combination 
of the manifold in which it may be definitely 
fixt and again participated in by ns in the 
movement hither and thither of thought. In 
each poetic imagination, before it has done its 
work, lies this mystic unity, and in doing it 
each seeks to escape from this; the best that 
we could ourselves be would not content us, 
because we can not be it otherwise than by 
spreading out its formless depth into the sur- 
face of a completely related phenomenon. 

Language in all its operations is but the re- 
production, not the cause, of this tendency of 
our mind. But, after having at such length 
stood on the defensive, I can more briefly add 
the positive assertion that even this form of 
thinking, the only one possest by us finite 
beings, would actually remain very imperfect, 
without this reproduction in language. Lan- 
guage, of course, does not impart to the mind 
the elements of thinking ; but it indispensable 
when the mind has to combine these elements 
into the spacious fabric of its culture. As 
w^e always experience a refreshing effect from 
sense-intuition, and are not convinced of the 
success of any labor till we have before us 
some palpable result, so must the auricular 
images of names and the combinations of 
sounds that constitute grammatical and syn- 
tactical forms of speech, present to us in a 
fixt, sensible form, the former the multiplicity 

194 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

of things, the latter the systematic plurality 
of their possible relations. There can be no 
clearness of thought where the many presenta- 
tions and groups of presentations that in mu- 
tual relation are to form a thought simul- 
taneouslj'- occupy our consciousness without 
Bames, and only in their original character 
of affections of the soul; even tho thus they 
may be not a mere heterogeneous assemblage, 
but already held together by relations corre- 
sponding to those subsequently to be formu- 
lated, yet consciousness is not aware of this 
internal organization. It becomes to ns real 
and true when in the task of statement we 
first bring one presentation into prominence, 
and then, guided by the syntactical form 
which w^e have given to its name, go beyond 
it in a definite direction, and rejecting on the 
way many others, succeed at last in putting 
into special connection with it the particular 
second presentation indicated by that direc- 
tion. No thought is clear and distinct until 
it has undergone this process of analysis and 
recombination, and the simplest self-scrutiny 
may teach any one how, in proportion as the 
plastic form of the idea comes out into relief, 
the obscurities disappear that clove to it in 
its earlier unexprest stage. As a work of art 
can not be a full harmonious truth until it has 
been completed in marble or bronze, and as 
a conception in the artist's imagination is but 
a disjointed and fragmentary beauty, so 

195 



PRACTICAL ENGLISH SERIES 

mankind lan^iage is the universal plastic 
material in which alone they elaborate their 
surging ideas into thought. 

I have dwelt at special length on this point 
of view, which has a close affinity with that 
which throughout forms the fundamental 
thought of these inquiries, in the conviction 
that what we may take to be the highest con- 
tent of the universe is to be conceived by us 
only as realized by a regular mechanism. I 
return but for a moment to the first form in 
which language exhibited itself to us. Origi- 
nally designed as a medium of communica- 
tion, it expanded unawares to us into an inde- 
pendent organism, over the development of 
which we have no control, and to whose in- 
herent nature we must accommodate our- 
selves. Now, how much language even in this 
its primary function — i.e., how much the pos- 
sibility of conversation — contributes to high 
human development, needs no more than to 
be mentioned. It is an indispensable instru- 
ment not only of the first training, whose ab- 
solute necessity we shall subsequently feel, 
but also of the further cultivation of the al- 
ready vitally stirring mind. A course of 
thought solitarily pursued by the individual, 
the direction of which only new external per- 
ceptions would alter, meets with salutary in- 
terruptions from the questions and answers of 
another; one-sided associations expand under 
the influence of a foreign world of thought 

196 



STUDIES IN PROSE 

and feeling, which brings alike new intuitions 
and new points for the contemplation of those 
common to both. But why refer here in gen- 
eral to that to which our attention must sub- 
sequently be specially directed ? Let us mere- 
ly add that language renders similar services 
to the thought even of the individual when 
alone. By the sound of names, by their metri- 
cal rhythm* in combination, are suggested to 
him attendant ideas and feelings, as well as 
remembrances of what is not present that 
would not in such abundance and distinctness 
accompany the dumb course of thoughts with- 
out words. As rime sometimes unexpectedly 
suggests to the poet a graceful conceit, so 
words in general, by means of the manifold 
associations cleaving to their meaning — so fre- 
quently figurative — guide our imagination 
along many paths that otherwise would be 
closed to it, that lead not always to the right 
goal, it is true — nay, often to a wilderness — 
but always disclose to us a rich field in which 
we can pick out the fruits that suit us. 



197 



HOW TO 

L/evolop belf- (confidence 
IN SPEECH AND MANNER 

By GRENVILLE KLEISER 

Author of '''' How to Argue and ff-^in.''^ 

In all fields of endeavor there are thousands of 
people who are forced to remain in the background 
because they lack self-confidence in speech and 
manner — the very fundamental of success. For just 
such people Grenville Kleiser has written his book 
<*How^ to Develop Self-Confidence in Speech and 
Manner." 

The work deals with methods of correction for 
self-consciousness, with manners as a power in the 
making of men, with the value of a cultivated and 
agreeable voice, with confidence in society and 
business. A series of suggestions is given for an 
every-day cultivation of these qualities. 

"Embodies in a most encouraging and practical 
way all that is needed to make one who is naturally 
timid or fearful in speech and manner, self-poised, 
calm, dignified and confident of himself. It must be 
said that the method proposed is one of sober self- 
estimate and persistent effort along well considered 
lines of thought and action, designed to eradicate this 
uneasiness." — Times Dispatch, Richmond, Va. 

I2mo, Cloth. $1.2^, net; by mail, $1.40. 

FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 



NOV 21 1911 



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